Dad rock and ironist pop

1. Perhaps I've been wearing my leather jacket for too long -- I've got this sudden urge to listen to Dire Straits. They don't really deserve the dad-rock disdain they provoke. Brother in Arms, for example is an 80s snare-drum-and-organ/guitar-solo classic. Or maybe it's because I've been getting too into the history of the Roman Republic? I may be turning into the duller but marginally less revolting one from Peep Show. Anyway if you want to find Brothers in Arms you can do so easily enough, so here instead is a version by a Gregorian chant combo from Spain:

Love the velour habits, not so sure about the actual singing.

2. Here are the Pet Shop Boys many years ago. Chris is all good-looking in a Mark-Owen styley, and Neil just looks bizarrely young, though he was slightly older than I am now. The song is the one that gave them their ironist tag, because it's about the sort of idiots that bought into Thatcherist greed.
Wikipedia has helpfully informed me that the Zazous of In the Night neither aided nor abetted the Nazi occupation of France but cared only for fashion and fine living. So maybe that graffiti was rebuking fashionistas for not caring about the rather sick state of Italy right now. Skinheads beat up a man in Verona putting him into a coma, and I think he's just died; there have subsequently been marches there not against but for the skinheads; and in Milan Romany camps have been firebombed. This place is not well.

You can sort of get why people hate the gypsies; they give the towns of Italy this oddly Dickensian air, begging in a nastily abject way that's really just a cover for robbing you. There are even children who pick your pockets and take the spoils back to their Fagins. Two women with babies cornered me in my first weekend here, pinched my arm hard to enough to leave a bruise while talking at me fast and loud, and took my purse as I was trying to get away. Distracted by the situation I didn't notice them taking it until too late. I only lost about five euros and a nice new purse, but it's still unpleasant for your sense of self. You can see why people would get angry at that's being visitors' experience of Italy. But I don't really trust the police here either; they move around purposefully looking like extras from a George Michael video, e.g. with a distinct hint of kinky bondage to their sunglasses and leather-accessories get-up. I rather get the impression that they fall between two stools; too harsh for the La Repubblica reading types like myself, too soft for many people who think something has to be done about all this foreign crime. Of course I'm out of my depth, because I don't understand Italian well enough to keep up with what's happening; it just leaves a slightly unpleasant taste in my mouth.