Not so long ago, mysterious men would dictate whether certain records were suitable for Britain’s pop diet. At the BBC’s Written Archives Centre in Caversham the files of the Dance Music Policy Committee have been preserved for public inspection. This was pop’s equivalent of the Bilderberg Group. It was a shadowy unit set up in the Thirties that took the role of Britain’s cultural guardian very seriously. When one member said that he felt like “a crazy weather vane in a storm” the controller of sound broadcasting replied: “No one is more alive than I to the need to buttress the forces of virtue against the unprincipled elements of the jungle.”
The Dance Music Policy Committee. Wow.