Rockhunter, Issue 32, 29 January 2007
Versions and Voices: English Language Fashion from Frank Spencer to Jamie T
One of the best things about living in England is the pace of change in speech fashions. Other countries move glacially slow. I’m thinking France, USA, and loads of other places I haven’t really thought enough about. But here in England, we got it going on. Half the time, no one knows what the other half is saying. I was born in Cambridge and used to work in bookshops there, so I’m well aware that the elites have always had their special way of excluding others — even members of the same group — through language. And that works every which way, through every hierarchy that you can think of. Language is a generator of individualism like no other. For even later-capitalist marketing exploits community niches.
Anyway, what I’m talking about today is language and pop music. Ever since I switched my music antenna back on a few years ago, after not being bothered with the present for most of the 1980s and 1990s, I noticed the Frank Spencer effect creeping in. From “Oo-bla-dee” to Jamie T.
It was Elvis Presley, mumbling like he was singing for himself in a room alone. Or Jimmy Reed, who couldn’t help having a drink before recording his tunes, thereby commiting to vinyl his ‘mushmouth’ singing style. Or Jimmie Rodgers, shouting high above the noise of the bar, loud enough to be heard and slurring due to spotted lungs. Depending on who you believe. Take your pick. Black or white. If you feel you have to choose who was first. We’re talking about language fashions, picked up and projected all over the place all at once. Come to think of it, Flanagan and Allen did their bit for down-home renditions. They’re the original version of the pub singer type that everyone’s been mocking since Billy Connolly gently did it a few years back. Only there’s been no pub singers for many, many years. And karaoke is not the same thing at all.
Language fashion is not a new thing in England. Consider Charles Mackay’s Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1852), which includes a chapter called “Popular Follies of Great Cities”, in which he ruminates on the peculiarities of fashionable phraseology, including the fleeting use of the portmanteau word, “QUOZ”, or the question “Who are you?” that still lingers on football terraces to this day. Think about all the British movies made from the 1930s to early 1960s. Chock full of Americanisms, from Noir to Beat, filtered through feature films, Jazz and Blues. I’m well aware that E17 were not the the first English people to try and exoticise or de-Anglicise their speaking voices. Although their singing voices were quite angelic, all things considered. Anyway, it was Tim Westwood, the big wanker, who did it first for this new generation. And the “Big Dog” himself has gone through several linguistic refits since trying New York on for size back in the 1980s. At the moment, he’s reprezentin his endz the only way he knows how - by trying out South London Jam-African.
Now I think of it, it was Ray Gange in The Clash’s movie vehicle Rude Boy (1980) who I first noticed doing the back-of-the-throat, fly-catching mushmouth Sa’ff Lun thing. He definitely put a “w” in “boy”, as my memory recalls. See? This is the trouble with origins, they just keep going back. And before you know it, they’re totally outta sight! That’s why I generally stick to my presentist take on Marxiana. With a shang-a-lang-a-dooby-wah! Prole-Voola!
Right, back in the world with Jamie T, well aware that he’s doing different in creating a dolce stil novo, like Dante did in La Divina Commedia. We get a hint of what’s involved in this social intervention from the use of a schoolmaster’s voice admonishing some of his charges for the “blue-blooded murder of the English tongue” in a received pronounciation sample in “Sheila”, available on the lad’s own corner of MurdochSpace. Hate to drag the dead into the proceedings, but there’s a shitload of Joe Strummer in Jamie T’s delivery. Not sure whether that’s just the thing with broken toothed singers, but the former’s phrasing’s got shades of the latter’s. Anyway, I shouldn’t care to share a lift with either of them. In the case of Strummer, I wouldn’t have done so even before he’d died. I reckon with enough episodes of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em under his belt, Jamie T would be singing a different tune. Maybe even “Hello My Darlings”, as versioned by Charlie Drake.
What’s all this about Frank Spencer? Well, dat’s the ting with Anglicised versions of patois, without wishing to come all over David Starkey, it makes the speaker sound like Frank Spencer. Down here in Brighton, there’s not much sign of it in the Indie community, which is pretty solidly Americanist. But being in the company of students, albeit at a distance, it’s quite obviously a massive influence on well-heeled yoof. The Spencerisation Project is huge. The middle classes, the crossest of all the classes, love being able to assert themselves even more thoroughly. And they must percieve that the emphatic nature of Jamacaphonics gives them an edge in social situations. Where was I? Oh yeah, the first time I encountered Spencerisation, I laughed out loud on recognising it. It was transported back to the late 1970s, when every rotten ITV impressionist did Frank Spencer. Especially Lenny Henry, the big tosser, who was the last impressionist ever to get paid for doing it!
Me? I’m stickin to my chops, daddy-o! They do right by me. Everyone knows what I grok. Dig? Like, it’s now! I ain’t no Time Travel Agent!
Pull my finger.
Ed.
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