The Schooled Society

Czechoslovakia, October 1937. Europe's youngest democracy is on its knees. Millions are mourning the death of the nation's founding father, the saintly Tomáš Masaryk. Across the border, the Third Reich is menacing – and plotting to invade.

The history of punk rock is rife with underground aggressors who enjoy a surprise brush with mainstream notoriety thanks to an atypically sunny song that teeters precariously close to novelty-tune status. So the crossover success of the Chats is all the more remarkable given that it came through their surliest song. With the 2017 single “Smoko,” the Australian trio not only scored an anti-social anthem that’s since been covered by the likes of YUNGBLUD and Wet Leg, they also transformed regional vernacular—in this case, Aussie slang for “smoke break”—into an international catchphrase. Vividly channeling the boiled-blood irritation of a service-industry worker who’d sooner gut you than waste a precious second of their five-minute puff session making idle conversation, “Smoko” nonetheless possessed the sort of Seinfeldian relatability that landed the then-teenaged band on morning shows and the 6 o’clock news back home. But since then, the Chats have hardly gone out of their way to make themselves more respectable for the masses. The best songs on their 2020 debut High Risk Behaviour concerned venereal disease, getting caught wanking on webcam, and gorging yourself on rump steak. Now their second album comes bearing a title that’s practically begging to get them disinvited from the late-night talk show circuit.

A survey of the role and the future prospects of the local press in the 1990s. The authors also take into account the radical changes the local press have been through with new technology and the proliferation of free newspapers.
From the end of the First World War until the beginning of the 1970s, there was a
remarkable uniformity and continuity in the British local press. Young people embarking
on a career in journalism in the 1960s were schooled by the older professionals who
began their working lives on newspapers in the 1920s and 1930s. Fundamental
journalistic practices and news-gathering routines which they learned at that time,
however, were not in essence different to those which they passed on half a century later:
how to take accurate shorthand notes in a ring-backed reporter’s notebook; how to
develop a garrulous but trustworthy source on the local council; the correct form of
address for a bishop. In the 1960s typewriters would probably be small, portable, grey
Olivettis instead of black-and-gold Remingtons, and there were probably new neon strip
lights to illuminate the same dusty, paper-filled, smoky, linoleum-floored offices.
Otherwise little had changed. There were some differences of practice. Most reporters no
longer had to collect the names of mourners as they left the funerals of local worthies.
Newspapers printed bigger pictures, and there were more of them.

The Barbirolli Societys latest release is a 2-CD set of the complete concert given in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester on 20 October 1960, with the combined forces of the Hallé and BBC Northern Symphony Orchestras. The concert consisted of Nielsens Symphony No.5 and Mahlers Symphony No.7. Michael Kennedy, writing in 2000, stated: Performances of the (Mahler) Seventh were much rarer then than they are today, and Mahlerian scholars and enthusiasts flocked to Manchester for the event, among them Deryck Cooke who was profoundly impressed by Sir Johns ability to make the works structure cohere. This was an especially significant comment coming from Cooke, who harboured many doubts about the symphony and confessed to finding it most problematical.