Pepys, Dostoevsky, and Skinner: John Sutherland’s imprimatur means this Streets piece can leave the callow lowlands of NYLPM and be linked on the Wedge instead. My major problem with the article – aside from Sutherland’s reading of the narrative which I’m not sure I agree with – is the continual use of “underclass”. Ben Thompson in the Observer Music Monthly rightly pounced on “Think I’m ghetto? Stop dreaming” as a (the?) key Streets line. Not having fifty quid in your account doesn’t make you “underclass”; nor does being keen on a burger. Skinner’s appeal is way less vicarious than Sutherland suggests.
(You can’t win, though – on an ILM thread one nay-sayer posited that people will excuse any old shite as long as it speaks to ‘their culture’.)