The Managing Director

The character of The Managing Director SPOKE by Tam Dean Burn
Any other characters SPOKE by the former Bill Drummond

THE LAST QUESTIONS

SPOKE

WRIT

From the Desk of The Managing Director of Penkiln Burn Recordings
Friday, 31st October 2025

CULTURAL IMPERIALISM:

What is Cultural Imperialism?
What is Cultural Imperialism for?
In what ways are you implicit in Cultural Imperialism?
In what ways could you advise the former Bill Drummond escape his being implicit in Cultural Imperialism?

I think that we can take it as a given, the two things that British Cultural Imperialism ‘gave’ to the world was the necktie (Castell & Son, Oxford 1870) and Football (You chose the date, but Victoria was on the thrown). And to a lesser extent Cricket, Rugby, Tennis & Golf.

But...

British Cultural Imperialism died when the United States of America won World War Two and saved the UK from the Nazis winning the said war. That being the moment that any culture that these islands produced, had to first be validated by those in the USA, before it had any sort of global impact.

The prime examples being The Beatles.

But first...

What is a Profile
What is a Profile for?
Do you have a Profile?
Should your Profile be ‘curated’ by others?
Should your Profile be ‘curated’ by His/Her-Story?
Does your Profile only exist in the eyes of others when you turn your head?
Or...
Does your Profile only exist online?
How would you go about deleting your Profile?

What is Online?
What is Online for?
How could you murder the Online World.
Why would you want to murder the Online World?
Has the Online world totally commodified the Real World?
Should there be a war between the Online World and the Real World?
How would that war take shape?
What would that war look like?
Would you want to be a foot soldier in that War of The Worlds?

What is Self-Harm?
What is Self-Harm for?
What is your Self-Harm of choice?
How could you go about overcoming your use of Self-Harm?
How do you judge others by their choice of Self-Harm?

What is Judgement?
What is Judgement for?
What started you Judging others?
What would stop you Judging yourself?

What is Punishment?
What is Punishment for?
What was the reason you were first Punished?
What was the reason why you first Punished others?

I mean...

Does Punishment work?
Does Punishment stop people being Angry.

What is Anger?
What is Anger for?
What motivates the Anger in you?
I mean the real Anger, in your real life, not just the Anger about wars on the other side of the World, that you can indulge yourself in feeling angry about.
Should that last sentence be edited out of this list of questions?
What would stop you from being angry?
And don’t say ‘When world peace breaks out’.

Do people commit Crime because they feel Angry?
If you had more self-control, could you stop yourself feeling Angry?

What is Self-Control?
What is Self-Control for?
How do you measure the amount of Self-Control you have?
How would you like to free yourself from the Self-Control that you constrict yourself with?

What is Coercive Control?
What is Coercive Control for?
How have you used Coercive Control?
How have you been Controlled Coercively?

But back to that American Cultural Imperialism...

In what ways has the Electric Guitar not only symbolised but globalised American Cultural Imperialism in the second half of the 20th Century?

In what ways has the Electric Guitar commodified the ideas of Rebellion and Freedom and all the chicks you want to shag and all the money you want to spend all at the same time as all those brandishing an Electric Guitar up on a stage think they are expressing themselves, but in fact just expressing the dominance of American Cultural Imperialism, at the same time as telling their audience about the size of their cock?

You might be Billy Bragg, but you are still holding a Fender Telecaster.
You might be Bob Dylan, but you are still selling your catalogue for way more than the Devil would ever offer you for your soul.

You tear off the wrapping paper and inside it is all still doing the same thing, the same job...

We make those two statements knowing full well that the former Bill Drummond is a complete fan boy of both Billy Bragg and Bod Dylan.

But...

I mean...

Back in 1962 Bob Dylan asked us the following questions...

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly
Before they&aposre forever banned?
Yes, and how many years must a mountain exist
Before it is washed to the sea?
Yes, and how many years can some people exist
Before they&aposre allowed to be free?
Yes, and how many times can a man turn his head
And pretend that he just doesn&apost see?
Yes, and how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, and how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, and how many deaths will it take &apostil he knows
That too many people have died?

Yes, and how many ways was Dylan the perfect poster boy, without us ever being aware there was all this small print on the back of the poster?

Did Dylan know then, that answer to the above questions he was asking us, was not only blowing in the wind but the asking of these questions was the perfect bait to ensnare the former Bill Drummond’s generation into an addiction for that American Cultural Imperialism, while at the same time as we thought we were ‘giving it to the man’?

Is this how the trick works?

Tell a boy in your class, how interesting you think his music taste is, and he might fancy you back, even if you don’t want his hand down your knickers.

Forget that last sentence...

And back to Dylan.

We were literally giving it to the man, as in Bob Dylan was able to sell his music publishing catalogue to Universal Music Group in 2022 for $300,000,000.

Contact your local Universal Music Group office for further details.
I mean who owns Universal Music Group?
Where do their profits go?
Are they involved with a global arms industry?
Does the fact that there are still wars in the world mean that the above quoted words from Bob Dylan in 1962, still make shed loads of cash for Universal Music Group in 2025?
Does that matter?
Am I losing the plot?
Who am I?
Who are we?
Who are us?

I mean...

What state of mind are these words you are reading coming from?

Anyway...

As for Fender Telecaster as used by Billy Bragg...

For my generation the use of a Fender Telecaster is a dog whistle that the user of this guitar is ‘for real’ and is speaking for ‘the people’. That is why it has been the guitar of choice for both Joe Strummer and Bruce Springsteen and of course Wilko Johnson. As in the Fender Telecaster is another way that American Cultural Imperialism can sneak through the back door, creep up the stairs, without our parent hearing, and slip themselves into our bedroom and then crawl into our mind.

I mean...

You don’t even have to know what a Fender Telecaster is, or its history, or it is the guitar of choice of the aforementioned troubadours of the working man, for it to achieve its aims.

I mean...

Were The Beatles just something that American Cultural Imperialism allowed us to have, in our now fast fading British Empire, to keep us in line as a vassal state?

And everything that followed from The Beatles?

And when did the Electric Guitar’s power to entrance a global audience start to slip?

As in...

When did those scales begin to tip?

Was it in the 1980s with the rise of Female Empowerment and Rap / Hip Hop?

Did that rise of global Female Empowerment begin with Madonna, then make its way through Hole and arrive at where we were now with the likes of Taylor Swift?

Or is Taylor Swift so last year, along with Charlie XCX, and now it is all Lily Allen?

Or is Lily Allen being used, just like The Beatles were used to keep the UK in tow with the USA?

I mean...

Is there now more money, thus global control, to be had by American Cultural Imperialism with the marketing and selling of Female Empowerment, than...?

I mean...

When did the last teenage girl scream at a band up on a stage brandishing electric guitars?

Or even...

When did the last teenage girl scream at a boy band who had learnt all their moves?

I mean...

What teenage girl would lower themselves to hand over hard earned cash to just scream at young men up on a stage doing whatever those young men might do?

When did the last teenage girl scream at Harry Styles?

I mean...

Why would a teenage girl, or young woman, or woman of any age want to do any of that screaming stuff, when there are so many female artists to choose from that can deliver them pre-packaged Female Empowerment to the door like via whatever delivery service they choose?

I mean...

Would you rather have been a Directioner or a Swifty?

Anyway...

Back to Rap / Hip Hop...

But before that...

Back to the Black Power movement in the late 1960s and early 70s. It was then that the former Bill Drummond became a fan of Gil Scott-Heron. This to his then 18-year-old mind seemed far more real than anything that Bob Dylan was doing, or any of those other rock bands from the left over dried up and shrivelling 1960s were doing. This was more threatening. And hard hitting. And alternative. And then he started reading about Marcus Garvey and the whole Back to Africa movement. The reclaiming of roots. Of lost culture. Of finding one’s soul.

But...

It was getting complicated in Bill Drummond’s head.

Why was Fela Kuti...

I mean...

You do know who Fela Kuti is?

I mean...

Why was this Fela Kuti the ultimate African music maker back in the early 70s, using the tools of American Cultural Imperialism at the time – the Electric Guitar?

Was not this the total opposite of what should be happening?
Was not Fela Kuti’s appropriation of American music exactly what that American Cultural Appropriation would want?

Fast forward 55 years and the now 72-year-old Bill Drummond is listening to the likes of Olamide and loving it at the same time as wondering why African music has so sold its soul to the global power of Rap Music.  

I mean...

You do have your tickets for Olamide at the Wembley Arena on this coming 23rd of November?

I mean...

Was not the Black Power movement of the late 60s and early 70s about rejecting all of the American Cultural Imperialism in favour of re-connecting the art and music of Africa?

Whereas...

Almost the reverse has totally happened.

I mean...

Has the music and art of Africa over these past 55 years been bit by bit rejecting itself and its heritage, to worship at the feet of American Cultural Imperialism?

I mean...

Is this just what we did when we rejected our musical selves and heritage, to worship at the feet of the likes of Elvis, Dylan, Cobain and every other young man up on a stage wanking his Electric Guitar in public?

And don’t get me started on blue jeans and t-shirts.

Or should you?

Anyway...

Is it these unknowing ways that Cultural Imperialism always works?
When did the spreading of Cultural Imperialism switch from the spreading of the Empires religion to control its global reach, to the spreading of the ‘creative cultures’?

But of course...

All that was yesterday.

As of today...

Should we...

Discuss?
Debate?
Turn the other cheek?
Give unto Ceasar?
Or...
Overthrow the tables?
Set the Doves free?

Or do we wait until the Chinese have got all their Cultural Imperialism up and running and we all start genuflecting in an Easterly direction?

But in the meantime...

Is Social Media the last hurrah of American Cultural Imperialism.

I mean...

What is a Gate Keeper?
What is a Gate Keeper for?
Have all the Gate Keepers been made redundant?
If so...
Can we all stand on the stage that is getting more and more crowded, and attempt to shout louder than whoever is standing next to us, in the hope that someone out there will be listening?

Or...

Do we burn that stage to the ground?

I mean...

What the fuck?