Get Yerself a 'Proper Job' - Micko Has A Dig

New Single Proper Job on the divided state of Creative Britain 

When The Clash recorded Career Opportunities for their first album, (when I was a teenager), my mates and I all knew what they were shouting about.  Unemployment was on its way past the three million mark, thanks to the implementation of Thatcher’s neo-liberal Chicago School of Economics shock doctrine experiment.

 

Nearly fifty years later, (yes, fifty years) the career opportunities have been re-shaped following another ten years of Tory misguided and divisive austerity policies.  Career opportunities are still not knocking and jobs are definitely only being offered for no much better reason than to keep youngsters off the dole, as Job Seekers’ Allowance was previously known colloquially.  So, bravo Micko and The Mellotronics who are drawing attention to the increasing gap between the haves and have nots in the music and arts world in their new single ‘Proper Job’ released on 31st January, 2026.

These Mellotronic guys are not new to the world of music and small-town gigs.  They have trod the boards individually on more occasions than they may remember and are still working their own seam of creativity in their own bespoke way, having experienced the pitfalls and chased the rainbows that draw so many to life in the music industry. And it is a cruel business.  

The self-harm statistics for rock’n’roll dreamers make upsetting reading.   The Guardian newspaper reported in 2025 that Dr George Musgrave, a sociologist at Goldsmiths, University of London, said:

“The statistics are alarming – shocking. The rates of suicide among musicians which we reveal in this new research paints a picture of a music industry which is demonstrably unsafe."

The myth that anyone can make it by just following their dream, working hard and never giving up, is fine for the few who make it through, but genuine opportunities to become a Ziggy Stardust are few and far between…and just look what Bowie did to his fictional rock star.  Being a success is not necessarily a happy ending.  Would anyone seriously wish to follow Elvis Presley’s tragic path?

 

Micko and his band reflect that they are in an industry increasingly peopled by those who are kindly described as middle class.  To be blunt, forget the class denominations, it is about money.  Time and money.  If you come from a family background where there is enough money to enable you to indulge your artistic interests then you have a head start on the youngsters who come from families without any cash.  

A criticism easily thrown at those without the keys to the kingdom is one of ‘the politics of envy.’ It is not an accusation someone from a low income background could ever throw at a middle-class artist. Who wants to live a life in poverty for goodness sake, with the health damaging and life-shortening prospects that offers?  Far better to have a comfortable life with choices, even it means we get more bourgeois art than realism.

I have nothing against any of the young people who make it through in the UK to record a big-name label album and ride high in the charts, I wish them the best of luck in their endeavours.  They have taken nothing from anyone, (whatever the legal vultures may say about chord progressions), they work very hard at their craft, giving the market the product it wants to buy and evoking warm and tender feelings on the way.  They are able to bring a lot of pleasure and joy into our consumerist lives and I am grateful for that whoever they are.  Yet, a recent study by The Sutton Trust reveals the stark inequalities in access to the creative industries, that Micko and The Mellotronics are highlighting in this single. 

If you get round to reading the illuminating The Big Midweek – Life Inside THE FALL by bassist Steve Hanley & writer Olivia Piekarski you will find out about Hanley’s difficulty convincing his dad that playing in a band would be viable.  His dad had bought him a set of knives for a catering course, showing Hanley where he might be better placed than by a bass amp with the erratic Mark Smith.  Where Hanley and his drumming brother Paul, (now both in The FALL’s off-shoot band, House of All), succeeded, so many others fail to breakthrough for the very real need to earn a living.  In The Sutton Trust research the music industry, due no doubt to its low cost of entry and fluid structure at ground level, has a more equitable social stratification than high cost and time consuming creative disciplines like painting and sculpture, but still the privately educated dominate the top-selling music lists. As I say, good for them, so what is Micko moaning about? Private Schools exist to open doors to wealth for the children of the wealthy afterall.

Over in Great Yarmouth there is a great project called Freshly Greated which is striving to develop creative industry opportunities for the young people living in the town.  Yarmouth  (Link to ONS data opes in a separate page) is a town of 100,500, it has an ageing population which is far from healthy when compared to national statistics.  There are roughly 17,000 school age children, but the town is getting older. The statistics suggest that when you move into Yarmouth you get stuck there.  After running a pilot project called Play, Produce, Promote (PPP) for 18 months, funding has been found to continue for the work for another four years.

The young people taking part in the project are living in a town where 1:20 is out of work, 1:20 are living on benefits and 3:10 people are not economically active.  31.7% of the children in Great Yarmouth live in relative poverty.  One of the music teachers and event promoters working at PPP is Robin Evans, a local music hero, who post-pandemic has run the most successful series of open mic events Norwich, (22 plus miles distant from Yarmouth) has ever seen. Robin knows that making the right connections, knowing who to ask, being able to get time and space to learn how to play, practice and perform without paying out cash, having venues and opportunities to perform in are all difficult in a town dominated by a brief seasonal economy.  Anyone with any sense has already left town, to paraphrase Bob Dylan.  Robin gives everything to putting on live music events and playing in his band SNAKEMILK but his concerns are how  his enthusiastic and committed students from Great Yarmouth might break into an industry where 43% of top selling artists have been privately educated.  Private education is not on the menu for young people in the east coast town, so PPP is doing its damnedest to cut through.

 

Micko sings about Brian Eno, a politically left-leaning radical electronic musician, who started out in art school and first succeeded in the pop world with Roxy Music, before he rowed his own experimental boat in a fascinating solo (and collaborative) career.  Here you see Brian Eno, with glittery gloves twiddling electronic knobs in a classic early Roxy track, Virginia Plain.  You do not get to put this kind of thing together while working a proper full-time job.  

Micko has picked up on Eno’s musing that he was able to afford to get into an artistic line of work because unemployment benefit was paid to young people and higher education students during holidays between post-16 terms and after finishing college, or art school.  This is argued by Brian Eno to have enabled anyone with the interest to learn their creative craft irrespective of their economic origins and whether or not their parents advocated they get a proper job. The band UB40 even took their name from the application form Unemployment Benefit Form 40, as that was the only income stream they had access to until they released their debut album Signing Off and worldwide success.

 

Eno once said,

“I think as soon as you can release people from the absolutely grinding poverty that so many people are in, you give them the chance, the space to think and the space to get themselves out of a bad situation.”

Micko agrees and looks back in this song to how tough earning money was for him working on a building site, for example.  Today The Biz is a tough gig in different ways and young musical artists are adapting their dreams to their particular circumstances, whether in debt to The Student Loan Company for tens of thousands of pounds, and / or needing to cover the immediate demands of their landlord.  Learning to play music and getting out to perform it have to be done in between the day job, or night job. If they want to be a musician, very much like every waiter and waitress in Los Angeles is an actor between their ideal job in front of the film cameras, work is something that pays for life, but music is what they live for. As The Sutton Trust research identifies, getting educated is the way to higher incomes and access to careers in the creative industries, although having been to private school hugely increases the likelihood of progress in this sphere. What's new?

Micko and The Mellotronics are a composite group of musicians who have enjoyed some considerable success in their youth, being part of the punk generation, initially and unwittingly sponsored by the Department of Employment, as was Brian Eno and others from that time. The single has a bit of an odd poppy tone for such a serious subject.  The lead guitarist is Paul Cuddeford, who played with the Boomtown Rats and the rhythm section is Jan Noble (drums) and Budge Magraw (bass).  The band have the wherewithal to work with an Executive producer, Chris Kimsey.  Born in 1951, Kimsey has worked extensively with The Rolling Stones and many, many other hugely successful musicians in a wide range of genres and his experienced hand helped tilt the sound of this latest release toward what they believe to be a 1970s glam-rock era pop sound.

 

The press release gives a good explanation of the sentiment behind the song. While the song itself lacks any obvious anger, or particular punch, it is making a serious point about the state of the music industry and for that veterans of Micko Westmoreland and his Mellotronics should be applauded.  Micko is genuinely concerned about the state of the country's creative industry, so he has written a song about it. That is what he does for a living, writes and performs songs.  He's made it through thus far, as have his band members, but how many more ex-brickies' lumpers (hod carriers) could follow that path today? Perhaps, Micko, or Brian Eno might pop over to Great Yarmouth to meet the people at PPP and see if they can lend a hand. 

You will have to wait to hear the new single from Micko Westmoreland's band as it is out on 31st January, 2026, but with the  permission of the band here is the video that accompanies the new single.

 

Spencer Ide

19th January 2026