I like cheap, light-hearted drivel from the 1920s and 1930s. You know - stuff with no meaning whatever. Tosh.

Hear Hear! It's the very essence of Trad Folk Song too. Little wee tales that just are what they are without bashing you over the head with bleedin' messages. Even the very bleakest of ballads are entirely without point or purpose - they exist purely to entertain the listener (even though I often feel like offering out help-line numbers afterwards, like the BBC do after a particularly rum episode of EastEnders - but after The Band Played Waltzing Matilda I'm usually ringing The Samaritans anyway). For sure, I like my music bleak, dark, experimental, droning, unrelenting, harsh, unforgiving, mimimal and wyrd as feck (i.e. Utterly Human) but there's no message, much less meaning behind any of it.

Of course, like all Great Art, we can attach our own meanings to things, indeed such personal significances & assiociations are inevitable & enrich our entire relationship with the music as a whole, but as soon as someone Prescribes what that association is by Writing Something Deep & Meaningful, then I'm out of there. Like the times I saw Ewan MaColl - expecting the master singer of traditional ballads & getting the puny political idealogue instead. I can't listen to Dylan, Billy Bragg or much of Robert Wyatt for the same reason. But when you listen to Dudu Pukwana, Johnny Mbizo Dyani, Abdullah Ibrahim, Kippie Moeketsi, you're hearing the politics of human beauty & experience loud & clear in jubilant affirmation.