• The term bourgeois I use following Flaubert, not Marx. Bourgeois in Flaubert’s sense is a state of mind, not a state of pocket. A bourgeois is a smug philistine, a dignified vulgarian. … The character I have in view when I say “smug vulgarian” is, thus, not the part-time philistine, but the total type, the genteel bourgeois, the complete universal product of triteness and mediocrity. He is the conformist, the man who conforms to his group, and he also is typified by something else: he is a pseudo-idealist, he is pseudo-compassionate, he is pseudo-wise.

    —Vladimir Nabokov, “Philistines and Philistinism,”

  • [T]his type of analysis skirts over the stark fact that the original U.K. punk explosion was borne out of frustration not over Thatcher and her free-market policies but out of decades of state expansion over every aspect of life in the Sceptered Isle.

    The punk movement kicked into gear well before Thatcher became prime minister in 1979. The first wave of punk had crested by the time she darkened the door at 10 Downing Street (indeed, the Sex Pistols had gone completely kerblooey by then, and the best days of bands such as the Buzzcocks and the Damned were behind them by the time Maggie and Dennis moved in).

    It’s far more accurate to argue that Thatcher was herself an emanation of punk, as some anti-Thatcherites have grudgingly done. She in no way came from the working classes, but as the daughter of a mere shopkeeper and and as a woman, she was transgressing the established order just as much in her own way as Poly Styrene of X-Ray Spex (another punk band whose glory days were over by the time Thatcher arrived) or the swastika-sporting Siouxsie Sioux ever did. Or for that matter, Joe Strummer, the son of a diplomat.

    —Was Margaret Thatcher Really Responsible for *Every* Song in ‘80s Britpop? And If So, Don’t We Owe Her Big Time? - Hit & Run : Reason.com

    • Sex Pistols: Never Mind the Bollocks
    • The Clash: The Clash; London Calling
    • The Damned: Damned, Damned, Damned; Music for Pleasure
    • Siouxsie and the Banshees_: The Scream_
    • Ramones:Ramones;  Leave Home;  Rocket to Russia; __Road to Ruin
    • Talking Heads: Talking Heads: 77; __More Songs About Buildings and Food 
    • Buzzcocks: Another Music in a Different Kitchen; __Love Bites
    • The Stranglers: Rattus Norvegicus;  No More Heroes;  Black and White
    • X-Ray Spex: Germfree Adolescents
    • Generation X: Generation X
    • The Jam: In the City;  This Is the Modern World;  All Mod Cons

  • Spring has brought out all the fun graffiti.