“Give me it down to there, hair, shoulder-length or longer…”

The more time I spend involved in research and academia, the less inclined I am to criticise the choices which others make in pursuit of what they consider to be ‘important’ or ‘worthwhile’ research. If it floats your boat and those of your (sometimes minuscule ) coterie of co-obsessives, then get on with it and more power to your elbow. Seriously. In return, I expect that most tedious (and often desperate) of questions, ‘why is your research “important”?’, to at least be asked in a spirit of generous enquiry rather than implied criticism. Likewise, I won’t feign interest in a subject which holds no appeal whatsoever for me, nor do I expect anyone to endure what I do if it holds no interest for them. There are plenty of us; there is so much to learn and know; live and let live; horses for courses, etc., etc., etc.

Having said that, cultural relativism can be pushed to breaking point when it appears to support research which results in the statistically (rather than subjectively) bleedin’ obvious. ‘Man bites dog’ is not a new (or, hence, newsworthy) story. Nor, as The Guardian’s Education supplement’s ‘Improbable Research’ column has noted, is the conclusion that some people have short hair, some people have long hair and some people have medium-length hair (whether ‘thrust upon them’ or not). Like many of us, I have belonged to each of those three cohorts at various stages in my life. I am probably destined, in time (although hopefully in the long- rather than medium- or short-term), to join that other anthropological grouping which might be termed ‘ex-wearers of hair’. Hence, the researchers of ‘Hair Length in Florida Theme Parks: An Approximation of Hair Length in the United States of America’ really could have stayed at home (and perhaps sat on their “appreciably longer than buttock-length” hair?) rather than “combing” through “strands” of “data” to reach their conclusions, as conveyed by The Guardian. The world would happily (or unhappily) continue to turn without the ‘knowledge’ they have gifted to it. Instead, they could just have listened to what Gerome Ragni, James Rado and Galt MacDermot told us (no less astutely, and with no less quantitive accuracy) in 1967 about “the beauty, the splendour, the wonder” of Hair – whether “bangled, tangled, spangled” or, indeed, “spaghetti-ed”.

Hoop Jumping V: ‘Piled Higher and Deeper’

This graph/cartoon appeared in this week’s Times Higher. I think it sums up the main potential danger of the PhD process very nicely indeed, which is why it (including the proclaimed “everything” level of undergraduate knowledge) made me laugh out loud.

Although “Piled Higher and Deeper” by Stanford alumni Jorge Cham seems to have taken off in a big way across North America, this is the first time I had heard of it. The www.phdcomics.com site, which explains itself here, contains lots of very funny – and highly accurate – visual and verbal material on the agonies and pitfalls of doing a PhD.

OU pretty things

‘While other utopian visions of the Sixties have faded, The Open University remains and has grown,’ according to Yvonne Cook. Her good thumbnail history of the OU appeared in Wednesday’s Independent, in a special supplement to mark the 40th anniversary of the granting of the Open University’s Royal Charter on 23 April 1969.

Cooper quotes the author Philip Pullman, who describes the OU ‘as one of the last remnants of the impulse towards real social inclusion and betterment that underpinned the welfare state. Nothing like it could ever be created today, and so much the worse for today.’ I tend to agree. Happy birthday.

‘Papa’ John – sufficiently ‘Hairy’, but too spaced out

Of all the numerous genealogical links to and from the Rock Operas which I have pursued (and, occasionally, simply stumbled across) during the last few years, Chris Campion provided one of the most intriguing and bizarre in this Sunday’s Observer Music Monthly. Campion’s excellent, in-depth article on the post-Mamas & Papas life and career of chief ‘Papa’ John Phillips is well worth reading in full.

For anyone interested in pop-rock music on the cusp of the 1960s and 1970s, John Phillips is an important figure. He wrote, for The Mamas & the Papas (and Scott McKenzie), some of the anthems of the ‘peace and love’ generation which had the widest transatlantic appeal at the time, and which have proved most enduring as iconic musical statements of the era. Despite (or perhaps because of) this, The Mamas & the Papas were and sometimes still are subjected to that tiresomely frequent accusation of ‘commercializing’ or ’selling-out’ the ‘Counter-Culture’. A broadly-based audience warmed to their non-threatening version of hippiedom, their beautiful (by anyone’s standards) vocal harmonies, and Phillips’ melodies and lyrics. This wide appeal, combined with the fact that they did not play their own instruments (because they were singers – and we should note that this was never an impediment to ‘counter-cultural’ acclaim for Janis Joplin) has often made them rather too ‘pop’ for many ‘Counter-Cultural’ purists. Campion’s article goes some way towards redressing the perception of The Mamas & the Papas, and Phillips in particular, as ’squeaky clean’. On the contrary: Phillips’ ’spiritual’ and environmental concerns, prodigious libidinousness and even more prodigious drug intake place him firmly within the (admittedly contradictory) ‘mainstream’ of the ‘counter-cultural’ rock milieu of the time. This was, after all, a man who apparently ‘”believed in drug-taking as a way of life”‘.

Phillips also, it seems, developed a rock musical-theatre work with Hair producer Michael Butler. As Campion explains, in the early 1970s, between his first solo album and his dissolute 1977 recording sessions with Keith Richards, Phillips was ‘obsessed with the idea of writing an opera set in space’. The Apollo 11 moon landing had provided the inspiration, and the central role was written with Elvis Presley in mind. (Yes – Elvis.) Having ‘pitched the idea to Michael Butler’, Butler ‘brought on board a young director called Michael Bennett [who would take Broadway by storm in 1975 with A Chorus Line]. For several months, Phillips’ mansion became a hive of activity. Brainstorming sessions were held in the library, a pile of cocaine available for anyone to dip into….Unfortunately, it was not to be. Michael Butler pulled out of the project just as the final cast was to be approved. “Drugs made John very difficult to work with,” Butler says. “He also had a lot of paranoia. And that was the last thing we needed.”…The idea of turning the musical into a sci-fi comedy movie faded too (despite some interest from Jack Nicholson and the mooted involvement of George Lucas)…Nonetheless, with the help of Andy Warhol, Phillips had found new financial backing for Space, now to be retitled Man on the Moon….Harvey Goldberg attended one of the 45 preview performances. “It was so bad that I couldn’t even bring myself to go backstage,” he remembers. “It was truly one of the worst things I’d ever seen.”…The New York Times wrote: “For connoisseurs of the truly bad, Man on the Moon may be a small milestone.” The show closed after five nights…What was left was a suite of 22 songs (which will be released for the first time ever later this year) in which Phillips reinvented himself as a space-age Cole Porter, questing after love and truth in the outer realms.’ Read the full article here.