Just a friendly call to say you're behind on your payments, I can take a Visa or Delta payment now, or we can recall your vaccine for measles."So the most useful advice to Africa would be to try traditional methods of evading debt. When the IMF come round for their payments, the whole country should turn off the lights and hide behind a settee. Maybe one person could wander past and say to the IMF bailiff: "Who you looking for, mate? Ghana? Phhhh, haven't seen it round here for years, mate, I think they moved away." More from Mark Steel. This will be remembered as the year pop music finally lost any credibility it ever had.
It's been a gradual process, with the long and winding road from Bob Dylan's protest songs of the 1960s finally ending up in 2005 in the car park of good intentions and zero content. Dylan's autobiography was a fascinating chronicle of a committed young man devoting his life to music he found inspirational, a story of long nights in clubs playing with folk musicians who truly believed their music reflected the American underclass. In the mid 1960s, Otis Redding, Percy Sledge, Aretha Franklin and Marvin Gaye were revolutionary artists, changing the landscape of popular music forever, bringing the hopes and aspirations of black people into the mainstream, giving them a focus and an identity in a way that has never been equalled.And what has happened to these inspirational black and white session musicians and singers? Many are penniless, having received few or no royalties. Even though their talents are as undimmed as ever, they've been thrown on the scrap heap by the music industry because they're not in fashion.
Interesting that it takes a white middle-class organisation like the BBC to set out to chronicle the hollow vacuum that now exists at the heart of American music.It's ironic that pop music believes it is an appropriate conduit to "save" Africa, to make us aware of poverty and debt, suffering and injustice. Punk seems like a brief, dim and distant period of shock and innovation.Today, musicians can't just make revolutionary music, they have to have opinions on everything from human rights to global warming. Pop groups are always droning on about environmental issues - and yet they set an appalling example of waste. Recently Thom Yorke from Radiohead was used by a Friends of the Earth campaign to make the government reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Along with many other groups from the Rolling Stones to Atomic Kitten, Radiohead have promoted carbon neutral touring, planting trees for every concert-goer. But the reality is that using jets and cars when embarking on lengthy world tours more than neutralises any good done by planting a few trees.Chris Martin from Coldplay (another self-important environmental whinger) and his wife Gwyneth Paltrow are said to drive the Toyota Prius, an eco-friendly car so trendy there's a two-month waiting list. Shame, then, that Mr Martin also uses private jets to meet up with Gwynnie and the baby while on tour promoting his new album - I suppose he justifies that in some convoluted way as "essential".Pop stars should get on with what they are good at, making music that brightens up our lives, gives us something to dry our hair to, wipe the baby's bottom to and play on our iPods to get through the horrible journey to and from work.
