“In the ‘alternative’ culture it’s fashionable, even essential, to claim that the ‘system’ is so unworthy it isn’t worth thinking about; that all politicians are ego maniacs; that the police are universally corrupt and Fascistic; that all journalists are liars and so on, ad nasuem. Such criticisms are usually carried out by people who’ve never printed their own magazine, never made a subversive video, never done anything, in fact, but consume the products that the State produces and condones. Acned youngsters with £30 haircuts are keen to fall, lemming-like, into generation gaps created by a succession of stupid (and not-so-young) men in leather jackets, whose bounty from this bottomless mine (gold records, coke, limitless penicillin) is also the main motivation for their sanitised form of revolt. It is no accident that rock’n’roll is now being embraced by Russia, China, and other societies that operate a high level of control. Contrary to the myths put about by numerous dullards in the 1960s and late 1970s, although music can be used to express and refine certain attitudes, as a revolutionary weapon, or information channel, it is usually about as much use as a lightbulb to Stevie Wonder.”