Everybody but the Prime Minister

Contrary to pretty much everyone else's opinion in the matter - not least, all the world's most established rock critics, bar none - I happen to think that the 1980s occasionally produced some fairly decent music.

Off the top of my head, I can probably even name two - maybe three - individual albums, released in the eighties, that weren't a complete and utter heap of steaming Showaddy-waddy. Oh sure, you'll have to sift through an alarming amount of garbage to actually find any examples. And half the time, you'd probably be so distracted by the outrageous hairstyles and unlikely make-up combinations that invariably crop up during the search (anything from Pete Burns' full head of tropical rainforest, back n the days when he still vaguely resembled a human being... to Nick Rhode's 'Cubism' school of facial cosmetic reinvention, years before he actually evolved into one) that quite frankly it almost isn't even worth the bother.

Almost. For while the dark, distant 1980s also gave birth to that global phenomenon known as 'MTV' - thereby instantly undoing any good it might otherwise have achieved in purely musical terms - let us not forget that this was also the decade that Ozzie Osbourne first started his solo career... that The Stone Roses released their eponymous debut album, imaginatively entitled (du-u-u-uh!) 'The Stone Roses'... that The Cure referred to something that might actually alleviate a few of your physical symptoms for a change, while The Smiths announced (rather prematurely) that 'The Queen Is Dead': thus instantly earning global respect and recognition, at least for as long as it took until we found out they were lying.

Even previously established bands went on to produce some their finest material in the middle of the 1980s. OK, so perhaps David Bowie was an exception. But what about The Stranglers? Paul Simon? And hey! Let's not forget that somewhere in Boston, a group of musicians got together that would later call itself The Pixies... even though the decade was nearly out by then (and perhaps that's just as well).

Yes, yes, I know. All this has to be counter-balanced by the unmitigated oceans of musical excrement to have also spilt out of that particular decade: anything from Rick Astley, to Mick Hucknall, to Darrel Hall (via John Oates), and beyond.

Personally, I have never quite figured out why the band called 'Europe' (hair alert!) never quite caught that spaceship 'leaving for Venus' after all. Such a shame, I've always thought. They would have done so well in an atmosphere composed almost exclusively of sulphuric acid. And then there was Milli Vanilli - so utterly bad, that I even had to alter my personal preference for ice-cream flavours just to be on the safe side.

At this point - at the risk of making around a million lifelong enemies - I might also have to add Foreigner to the list (so you 'wanna know what love is', huh? Hadn't you better learn a thing or two about this thing called 'music' first...?). Not to mention Bryan Adams (So you 'bought your first real six-string', did you? Shame you never quite got round to phase two, and actually learnt how to play the damn thing...)

***

But wait, let's stop this. Not only is writing about one's own musical tastes a rather dangerous thing to do - professionally speaking, it's infinitely more harmful to your health than, say, criticizing Islam, or exposing a human trafficking network run by the Romanian mafia... but no sooner did I embark on it to begin with, than literally dozens of nightmares from my own distant teens came flooding back to assault me: sometimes armed with the auditory equivalent of a chainsaw wielded by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.

So why do I do it, I hear you ask? Why do I risk life and limb by exposing myself to the undying hatred of generations upon generation of unborn Rick Astley fans... just to make the point that... um, I don't know. What was the point I was trying to make, anyway?

But of course, you all know perfectly well whom to blame for this particular digression, don't you. Yes, that's right: the same person we all blaming for pretty much everything else about life, the universe and UB40.  Lawrence Gonzi, it was, wot made me write about all this, I tell you. Who else?

Seriously, though. Think about it for a second. Who, apart from the current Prime Minister of Malta, has constantly been trying to remind us all of the 1980s: day in, day out, rain or shine, hell or high water, for the past year or so... for all the world as though (to name a rather well known rock anthem that only missed the 1980s by a couple of years) 'nothing else matters'?

And who, apart from Gonzi, seems incapable of even opening his mouth without instantly teleporting me all the way back to my parents' living room, just shy of three decades ago, where I would sit for hours and watch 'Deejay Television' (or 'Red Ronnie') on that old black and white Grundig in the corner? (Remember? The one that needed a 'booster' just to get a picture... and you had to manually alternate between 'UHF' and 'VHF' by throwing a miniature lever, affixed to the wall, much like Dr Frankenstein did with the switch that brought his celebrated monster to life...)

Ah yes: the unforeseen consequences of poorly planned political propaganda. You never know exactly what dead recollections you might accidentally resuscitate, when you invite us all to relive the 'bad old days' of the 1980s. For many Nationalists today those 'bad old days' might jog memories of a forgotten age when we actually used to take to the streets en masse to protest against stuff... you know: stuff like the injustice of having a faulty, sporadic and utterly unreliable electricity service, with power cuts every other week or so... sometimes several times in the space of a few days.

Well, 30 years (and €400 million) later, Malta's electricity provision remains just as faulty, sporadic and utterly unreliable a service as it was back in the bad old days. Actually it's probably worse: as confirmed by none other than Finance Minister Tonio Fenech, who revealed last week in parliament that Malta has experienced 1,100 power cuts in the past 18 months - the equivalent of TWO A DAY. (But of course we no longer complain about it, do we folks? Oh no. I believed it's called 'progress'...)

***

Speaking of Tonio Fenech - well, this may come as a surprise to him today, but in all this talk of the 1980s I can't help but picture him in my minds' eye, as I remember him back then. He was a couple of years above me at school (we both attended Sixth Form at St Aloysius), and... I'm not at all sure if he remembers himself the same way, but in my memory he cuts a surprisingly lean figure, with longish black hair tapering off into what we used to call a 'rat-tail', wearing a black Pink Floyd T-shirt and - wait for it - a choker!

Ah, those were the days. I wore a choker, too, and that was enough for me to accidentally mistake him for a liberal at the time... (can't rightly explain this all these years later, but for unfathomable reasons, people who wore chokers were considered 'cool' in 1986). Besides, I was a Pink Floyd fan, too (who the hell wasn't, back then?) who seriously believed world peace was not only desirable, but actually possible. And there was proof too: in the form of Roger Waters' lyrics to The Gunner's Dream, from the album The Final Cut.

Well, what can I say? Guess it wasn't the only thing I was wrong about at the time.

Now that I think about it, I happen to have very clear memories of all the other PN heavyweights back in the 1980s... and I need hardly add that they've all changed substantially since then, albeit in different ways.

For some odd reason, Louis Galea always re-appears in my memory as being completely bald (which I freely admit is strange, as press photos from that era clearly show him up to have been a fully-follicled specimen of homo sapiens in his prime.) Francis Zammit Dimech, on the other hand, I remember with long flowing locks, for all the world like a forgotten member of a band like REO Speedwagon (only without the corresponding speed). There was Ninu Zammit, too, who probably never knew that his nickname at the time (at least among a small group of comic-book aficionados brought up on 'The Fantastic Four') was... 'The Thing'.

I can't remember exactly what we used to call Austin Gatt back then. But I imagine it probably wasn't half as offensive as all the other the nicknames he has since grown used to.

***

The curious thing, however, is that... I have no memory of Lawrence Gonzi at all. Strange, isn't it? The one who bangs on the most about the 'bad old days' of the 1980s doesn't seem to feature in any of my own recollections of the same era. Nor does he feature with any prominence in all the contemporary images that constantly get trotted out every five years, as elections draw nearer: the Tal-Barrani incident, the Raymond Caruana days, and so on.

What makes this such a curious fact is not so much that... well, let me put it this way: if Gonzi himself wasn't actually at the forefront of the so-called struggle for democracy in the 1980s... then why the devil does he keeping banging on about it? Just to remind us all that he was never anywhere to be seen? That he took no part in the proceedings? And if so: what political sense does that make?

No. It's more to do with the fact that, unlike Gonzi, all the other Nationalist stalwarts from that era - the ones whose images actually do get evoked by all Gonzi's talk of the 'bad old days' of the 1980s - have practically all faded into the background.

And before you go running off with the idea that this is, well, the inevitable result of the passage of time (it is, in some cases)... well, think again. It's also the inevitable result of that other poorly thought-through strategy we associate with the present Prime Minister. The one called 'GonziPN', whereby a party which had fought for freedom in the 1980s, found itself reduced to little more than the extension of one of its less prominent activists, who was never seen doing any of the actual fighting himself.

And not only were the real freedom fighters utterly eclipsed by that remarkably solipsistic 2008 election campaign slogan: but they themselves - and others within the party - have time and again been ordered to fall on their own swords, just to shield the same Lawrence Gonzi from harm.

Austin Gatt now looks likely to become the third Cabinet member to find himself sacrificed on the GonziPN altar, using the pretext that 'all are expendable... except the PM'. He might conceivably be beaten to the honour by Joe Cassar. He might be followed by Chris Said. One thing, however, is certain - he has already been preceded by Carm Mifsud Bonnici and Richard Cachia Caruana.

Meanwhile, excuse me for once again dragging 1980s music into the picture, but I cannot help being reminded of another classic pop act from that particular decade: Everybody But The Girl. In this case, however, it's 'Everybody But The Prime Minister'... and the words 'has to fall' should of course be inserted between 'everybody' and 'but'.

How many more of the party faithful will take the plunge, I wonder, just to save the bacon of a leader whom none of us actually associates with anything worth remembering about the Nationalist Party's history? I somehow doubt we'll have to wait another three decades to find out.