Formation of the Dissertation

I mentioned in one of my previous entries that, having left Next, I would now be devoting a good chunk of my free time to preparation. Preparation for my dissertation.

Well, since that update I have started to establish some idea of what I'm going to be writing about. Thinking about the political side of music, it occurred to me that the vast majority of politically-minded songwriters and artists came from the left wing of politics - power to the people and fuck capitalism and all that.

So I thought I'd investigate the other side - the right-wing musicians. I spent most of yesterday trawling the internet for interesting examples, and I've already come across the surprising Micah P. Hinson ("Obama is the murderer of the American Dream"), the woefully unsubtle Darryl Worley ("You say we shouldn't worry 'bout Bin Laden/Have you forgotten?"), and the downright disappointing Matt Jay (from Busted) and Geri Halliwell (from the Spice Girls). 

More generally, I want to look at politically-active musicians from both ends of the spectrum, and find out how far one can go before the message starts getting in the way of the music.

Of course this dissertation is still in its most primordial stages (the dissertation, in its current incarnation, has several limitations) and there's a lot more reading to be done yet (I've just checked out a book on Britpop's support of Tony Blair's New Labour), but hopefully I'm onto a winner.

And if not, well, I've got like 9 months until this is due (like a baby!) so there'll be plenty of time to throw it all in the bin and start again.

Joel.