The Logic Off Topic list

John Matthews said ...Tony Thompson also quite rightly ridiculed the class
idea- which is mostly irrelevant now.

Well, to be more precise, I was trying to suggest it is overplayed by _some_
Americans who really don't have a clue how the UK functions currently,
having apparently derived all their 'knowledge' of us from old movies which
were often made by Americans in America.  My brother has been  resident in
the US for more than 20 years, loves it and has raised 2 sons there, but is
still amused by some American perceptions of the UK.  I have been astounded
at some stuff he has passed on  - for instance, he brought the family over
to stay with my parents in the Scottish Borders. drove out with them to a
local castle and took pictures of them in front of it, as one does. My
nephew took the resulting photo of himself in front of the castle to school
and showed it to a teacher (presumably an educated woman) who asked him very
seriously if that was his ancestral home! This is akin to suggesting that
Chicago is full of gangsters in spats and that those fine people who bring
us Logic Audio do it in those few free moments when they're not lying
blitzed in bierhalle in their lederhosen after a good few foaming steins.
And if you think that I'm exaggerating and this attitude doesn't exist, then
all you'd have to do is look for an example at that aparently popular
computer software and TV series, (with educational aspirations)  'Where in
the world is Carmen Something or other' which presented us with exactly that
foggy London full of Beefeaters nonsense. Then go read a few American books
where otherwide perfectly sensible authors make the all the British
characters spout stuff like 'I say! That chap's a deuced blighter, what?' To
be more serious, it is actually quite important not to view the rest of the
world as cartoon characters (let's face it, that's what portraying the US as
'The Great Satan' amounts to - could have come straight from the pages of a
Marvel comic) and all this stuff is quite insidious in subliminal terms.

As for sociology and the relevance of class to music business success, well,
you can count the beans, the heads and the ancestry all you want, but for me
what counts is personal skill, attitude and motivation, which you can
develop in all kinds of family environments. If I was looking for partners
for a project or people to employ for a session I would be thinking 'Can
this guy's playing cut it? How does he handle disagreements? Is he
reliable?' and I wouldn't care one small bag of monkey vomit what per capita
income his father had or the sort of school he went to. It is inevitable in
the music business that you go for the people that you know, as so much
relies on personal relationships. The people who have the technical and
personal skills _and_ bother to get to know the right people _and_ manage to
get the strokes of luck make it, and you can't apply the same procedures as
if you were hiring clerical staff for a government department.


Tony Thompson