My dad once threatened to sack an apprentice who wouldn't cut his hair. *

This was in the days before "tribunals" I think 



( * To be fair, his reasons were health and safety (it was dangling in the machines) and I think they came to some sort of  hair-net compromise )

I remember ~1968 one of my school-mates having long and very untidy hair, was sent home 'to get that hair cut!


Next day he came in with his head SHAVED!

He was sent home again.

This swinging cat looks pretty harmless to me Kitty...



Baz 

I wouldn't really say today's music far more 'homogeneous' at all. This notion seems unexamined.

The notion that the Beatles were solely a marketing success implies there is a formula to be repeated over and over again. But for one pop star that succeeds, one hundred others fail, and if they succeed it won't be to that extent - from most accounts the record industry hadn't a clue, which is for instance why a lot of the classical avant-garde made it onto LP in a big way in the 60s but there is no way in hell that many young (or older) composers could ever hope to get a CD release - the possibilities have been closed, not so much by the labels but by the times in which we live (music is just one part of multiple entertainments, etc.)

The Beatles are very much a one-off, therefore I'd be vary of drawing on their relationship to the industry as as some kind of model for other artists. But EMI supporting an artist such as Radiohead (whom I dislike), were they to stop touring, wouldn't be such a surprise to me. The Clash (also dislike them), to take another example, wouldn't play Top of the Pops and yet that didn't stop them from being supported by CBS. But to return to the Beatles, that wsn't really much of a risk, surely...

Punk is a perfect example that shows how record companies simply never learn.

When I talked about 'homogeneous' I guess I ws referring to what I hear in the charts where there is a range of things, I can still find myself surprised that something will chart (whether anyone thinks its music or not is kind of like whether photography should be displayed in art galleries type talk to me - of course it is music as it will argued about its qualities as music, just as the photograph will be talked about as an artwork as we walk around the gallery) - where it might be different is that its operating in a world where music is a smaller part of the picture, where computer games, etc. have a big presence, which isn't simply due to corporate globalisation. I think its almost impossible for anyone to reach a v wide audience bcz of this fragmentation.

I remember at a school disco (horrible thought, so 1970s) someone brought in the album of the musical Hair to be played, but the teachers wouldn't allow it. Another sort of hair ban at school.

I wonder whether any of the teachers had actually heard the music to Hair but it had a reputation as a controversial show and they were worried about sexual lyrics, I suppose.

Reiner, I must say I am mystified by that story.

I too had a fairly alarmingly reactionary headmaster (the school hall was regularly rented out to the Monday Club!) but even he would struggled to have justified expelling someone on the basis that they had published a novel, whether or not it was called 'The Punk'. Surely a cause for celebration in any education system -  even if the Head had privately disapproved of its content, publicly wouldn't he have to join in the applause?