`Preparing time, 10 seconds," says a voice from a car containing a radio receiver. The location? A desolate spot in the desert of New Mexico. The time and date? Five-thirty on the morning of July 16th, 1945. "All the observerships are in position," says the same voice, a message which prompts the assembled scientists to cover their eyes with the strips of dark glass provided by the US military. "Five seconds," says a second voice. "Four, three, two, one." Zero. Now, I know this may seem like a strange way to kick off a series that sets out to be a history of pop but it is where The Years Go Pop begins. Why? Because I agree with those commentators who regard the moment man first exploded the atom bomb as the point at which everything changed, moment numero uno in a kind of neo-cultural year zero. It certainly makes more sense to start with that "big bang" rather than, say, the moment Little Richard gave his tilt on the same phenomenon by wailing, "AwopbopaloobopalopbamBOOM" a decade later, though this usually is where most rock histories begin.
Then again, The Years Go Pop is definitely, almost defiantly, not just another history of rock. Focusing on the years 19451995, the area of exploration will be more "those singles and albums that put the art into pop-art" and, equally importantly, "those songs that helped change the way we see ourselves, the way we dress, dream, engage in sexual politics, fall in love", to quote the preface from tonight's opening programme on RTE Radio 1. In other words, I'll be looking at music that shaped the way we live. And let's face it, only a pedant would deny that pop music has become the single most potent form of cultural expression, a defining feature of life in the closing years of the 20th century.
That said, this process obviously is circular. Music, as with all the arts, is shaped by the way we live. Not just in terms of the creation of the original work of art, or cultural artefact, but in the manner in which we perceive these songs at particular points in time. That's why in this series producer Brendan Balfe and I will try to recreate, year-by-year, the times that wrap themselves around these discs like record sleeves. More specifically, record sleeves with the kind of extensive liner notes that give you the broadest possible contextual setting for the songs you are about to hear.
Of course, you don't need to be a post-modern ironist to identify the delicious dichotomy in the fact that during the year when the US ushered in the Atomic age, one of the most popular songs Stateside was a tune entitled Accentuate The Positive. Nor do you need to be a trainspotting rock historian to realise that when Bing Crosby fragmented the melodic lines in that particular song he was freely acknowledging his debt to jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong at least a decade before black music supposedly first coupled with white music and created rock 'n' roll. Likewise, when Frank Sinatra furrows into the soul of a song titled Homesick - That's All he gives aural evidence of how deeply influenced he was by black vocalists such as Mabel Mercer and Billie Holiday.
As for bebop, which really hit its stride in 1945, well, we all know that musicians such as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie deconstructed rhythm in a way that still makes most rockers sound like kiddies rattling out kindergarten rhythms on the lid of a biscuit tin. If you don't believe me, listen to what Gillespie and the Charlie Parker Sextet do to a tune like Dizzy Atmosphere.
Even more fascinating is the political impetus behind bebop. Yes, it was a music distinguished by its rhythmic complexity, expanded harmonies and increased instrumental virtuosity. Nevertheless, all of these technical developments had been evolving since, at least, the 1930s. The real core-and-truth difference between bebop and swing, or more traditional jazz, at the time, was that blacks finally found a way to fight back against what they quite rightly regarded as the bastardisation of their music, culture and racial identity at the hands of white bandleaders like Glenn Miller. The almost savagely angular and frequently atonal licks they began to play were fired as much by a need to say to their white peers, "follow this, honky" as they were by the desire to expand the language of jazz. Bebop musicians clearly were committed to the concept of returning black music to its African-American roots long before the arrival of rockers like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, or, much later, Michael Jackson. Indeed, this is where rap and hip-hop began - the music and the culture. As is obvious from the way contemporary groups like US3 tap into the roots of jazz.
Yet, you may ask, does any of this have any direct bearing on Irish culture? Actually, it does. By banning jazz records, Radio Eireann, as it was then known, not only added to this system of oppression in relation to African-Americans, but similarly limited the cultural options left open to its listeners. And why was jazz banned? Because it was "the devil's music" RTE claimed, obviously taking its cues in this, as in far too much at the time - including the preference for more-British-than-Irish regional dialects - from Lord Reith, head of the BBC. Or from the Catholic church and the Irish Government, two forces which were pretty much locked together in 1945. Indeed, in one legendary Leinster House debate even poor old Bing Crosby was described as "a decadent crooner". But don't worry, by paying the necessary bribes, I did manage to get the ban lifted for this series and Bing will sing again. Maybe even that "decadent" classic, Too-Ra- Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral (That's An Irish Lullaby). More to the point, in terms of Irish culture, President de Valera will speak again, and deliver once more to the Irish nation his riposte to Winston Churchill who, in his victory speech on V-E day, attacked the Irish Government's stance of neutrality during the second World War. Then again, he also made a visit to the German minister, Mr Hempel, to express his condolences at the news of the death of Hitler.
Meanwhile, marking V-E Day by burning a Union Jack outside Trinity College, was a group of students which included none other than the future Taoiseach, Charles J. Haughey. And even if I couldn't unearth a "sound-bite" of that particular event, there is one fragment of tape which contains an item that has never been broadcast but probably will linger in people's minds long after tonight's show. This is the voice of a priest blessing the Enola Gay aircraft "in the name of Jesus Christ" as it sets out to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima which was immediately to vaporise at least 80,000 people. You may not side with social commentators who suggest that God died during the second half of this century but "He" sure can be heard taking a last, gasping breath as this priest blesses that plane. It has been suggested that this priest was from Ireland - and he certainly sounds Irish. If that's true, wouldn't it be just typical? First we ban "the devil's music" from the nation's airwaves lest it pollute the minds and souls of Catholics, then we contribute to "the killing of God". To-Ra-Loo-Ra-LooRal, as Bing says. That's an Irish Lullaby.
On a broader cultural level, in 1945, radio was revolutionised by the introduction of magnetic tape recorders though too late to keep the world from slowly, inexorably, edging its way towards the age of television - or what Marshall McLuhan would soon be describing as "chewing gum" for the eyes. Coca-Cola also registered the label "Coke" as a trademark, the first ballpoint pens went on sale and Conrad Hilton opened his first hotel. 1945 also signalled the arrival of Abstract Expressionism, courtesy of Jackson Pollock. Movies, too, moved into a new era with films like The Lost Weekend and Brief Encounter daring to address previously taboo subjects such as, respectively, alcoholism and the secret sexual frustrations of the British middle class. New books included The Age of Reason by Sartre, Animal Farm by George Orwell and Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. In theatre playwrights like Arthur Laurents also began to address contentious subjects such as anti-Semitism.
However, even more fortuitous, in terms of both theatre and his impact on the collective consciousness over at least the following 20 years, was the debut, in 1945, of Tennessee Williams. He once claimed that his plays were his own personal attack against "the monolith of Puritanism" which really should make him not just one of the high priests of rock culture but a standard-bearer for sexual liberation and release from religious and political oppression. Tennessee Williams also provides one of the key lines in the first programme of The Years Go Pop. Speaking about the play which opened on Broadway in 1945, The Glass Menagerie, he says: "In memory, everything happens to music." I sure hope he's right.
The Years Go Pop will be broadcast on RTE Radio 1 on Wednesdays at 8 p.m., starting tonight.
