Dear Ralph.

@jamiewoods77 well I hope you're going to join me in Britpop Friday. Starting with Elastica and we'll see where it goes from there!
— djnrrd (@djnrrd) January 25, 2013

Dear Ralph...

ALRIGHT?

I hoped I'd WAKE UP to a BEAUTIFUL DAY but alas, WHY DOES IT ALWAYS RAIN ON ME? My wife is the opposite: 'I'M ONLY HAPPY WHEN IT RAINS', SHE SAID, but then, she's a STUPID GIRL.

Anyway, I'm not a DAYDREAMER and if I want to do GREAT THINGS I can't SIT DOWN with an OK COMPUTER and be TIED TO THE 90s. Like most GIRLS AND BOYS I'd like to be a FILMSTAR or a ROCK'n'ROLL STAR, but that idea is just TRASH, and there is no need for a SLIGHT RETURN to those BLUE SKIES ideas.

Since having BABIES I'm out of touch with the COMMON PEOPLE, there's no CONNECTION anymore and I don't even bother searching out SOMETHING FOR THE WEEKEND: I'm no longer SORTED FOR Es AND WHIZZ, or CIGARETTES AND ALCOHOL. I certainly can't COME OUT 2NITE, so don't stay ON STANDBY.

Instead I SLEEP, IN A ROOM, in a KINGSIZE bed or if needs be, in a WIDE OPEN SPACE or THE BENCH AT BELVIDERE. It's a FINETIME, a BITTER SWEET SYMPHONY. Is that GOOD ENOUGH? It's certainly not GETTING BETTER. SHE LEFT ME ON A FRIDAY...

 Anyway, WHAT DO I DO NOW?

 Jamie x

The Only Living Boy in New Cross

I miss London, a lot. But then I see what I have here and I'm happier than I think would be possible there.

But in a heap of Yuletide nostalgia I wrote a short story, creative non-fiction, life writing, based on actual events. It's about a night club in New Cross called The Venue, which is where myself and my friends used to go every weekend when we were at school.

It's been published by the (now) online Smoke magazine - a self-styled London Peculiar, words and images inspired by the city. It'll be in a book, they say, one day. That'll be cool.

Here's their rather lovely introduction...

"Belated New Year greetings to all. 

And first up in 2013 is another piece from our Night Bus To Camden project, as Jamie Woods recalls being sixteen at the New Cross Venue back in the days when it used to put on real bands rather than Coldplace, the Antarctic Monkeys and Maybe Gaga (“the UK’s No. 1 Lady Gaga tribute band”), when no one used to check IDs, and when ladies had to pay more than £1 admission on Fridays before midnight. 

This might also be your only chance to read a piece of literature that takes its title from a Carter USM song – or at least until Hilary Mantel publishes the third part of her Wolf Hall trilogy and reveals that Thomas Cromwell’s nickname for Henry VIII was Sheriff Fatman."

click here to read 'The Comfort and the Joy of Feeling Lost' by Jamie Woods

Janathon #3

My Shoes

I have owned – multi-blue suede Fila skate shoes, navy Vans that turned grey with age, kangaroo leather Adidas moulded stud football boots. Black DMs, blue DMs, steel toe-capped DMs and DM shoes to wear to school. Green Reebok basketball boots trainers, gold Nike Air cross-trainers and two pairs of Adidas Torsion tennis shoes in alternate colourways.

I wear my Converse everyday now. Blue low-top, blue low-top with double tongue, brown low-top also with double tongue, red low-top, Blue high-top, and Batman / Joker black/white/silver high-top. I also have a pair of Karrimor running shoes, and a pair of black leather shoes for funerals.

I would rather never have to wear shoes at all. I tried it one summer, in Scandinavia. I played football on gravel and danced on shingle and walked in the woods and went into town. The first day I relented was the day a four-inch rusty nail went through the sole of my Hi-Tec hi-tops and into my foot. I was rushed into a strange late-night Norwegian doctor’s office, jabbed with a tetanus booster and the puncture was treated. Within hours my foot had stopped throbbing, but my arm blistered and bubbled where the needle had punctured. And the midges and mossies came for trainers, blood-soaked as they were. But they were the only shoes I had with me, and I felt like that kid from Peanuts, Pig-Pen, as there I was, the boy with the flies swarming around his foot. 

My feet weren’t designed to wear shoes, and I’m not saying this like that Barefoot Doctor fella or a hippy (see blogposts passim) but as someone whose feet are simply the wrong size: too wide, too long, too high and too silly. Every pair of size 12 shoes I wear I burst through at the toe. Every pair of size 14 shoes I wear makes me walk like a clown. My running shoes are a size 13 and they are white and, according to my strict (although oft-broken) rules of fashion, no-one should ever wear white trainers unless they are taking part in sport. And even then, only at Wimbledon, or if you can’t afford running shoes that fit properly.

Janathon miles I walked: 1 (in my own shoes, not somebody else's.
New Year’s Fruitalution: Cranberries
Do I run everyday?: No.
Hours slept: Nowhere near enough.
Hours worked: Too many.

2012, yeah?

PROLOGUE
2012 has been a bit of a year, don’t want to brag, like, but compared the very little I’ve done since 1977, it deserves a bit of a hurrah.
We had a really cute baby (well, I just sat and napped and watched while my wife had the baby, but still...), and we named her Josie, a cool punk-rock-kitten sister to Jacob who is nearly four now.
I got a degree, and started a Masters.
I ran and completed a 10k race, having ‘taken up’ running a couple of months before.
I’ve read some stories out in public, and had one published by the EvergreenReview.
The wife and I DJ’d for a music festival which took place in a West Bromwich art gallery.

BUT MORE IMPORTANT THAN ALL THAT SELF-CONGRATULATORY NONSENSE, MY FAVOURITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR ARE:

This Is Life by Dan Rhodes

This is Life is the reason that Rhodes’ best novel to date was called Gold: because this is as good as Gold. Laced with Rhodes’ comedy and economy – not one sentence is unnecessary – this novel manages to host complex arguments of art and science, and the meaning of life, and the pain of loss, while being a genuine lovely and exciting Parisian romp. I recommend someone reads Dan Rhodes at least once a week: this week is no different.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides
I wrote my final dissertationy-thing on Eugenides’ debut The Virgin Suicides: it’s fair to say I was already a fan when I bought this book the moment the paperback came out. And while the David Foster Wallace connotations are wasted on me (I made it halfway through Infinite Jest and gave up) the pragmatic love story at its heart is wonderfully realised, and the novel is splattered with a degree of intertextuality that in the wrong hands would be cloying and convoluted, but in Eugenides’ delicate and un-rushed typing, adds colour and texture that really makes it something special indeed.

Everything by Andrew Kaufman     
I’ve read All My Friends are Superheroes, The Waterproof Bible and The Tiny Wife by the Canadian author Andrew Kaufman this year, and fell in love with his work in the same way I did with Dan Rhodes. Clever, surreal, witty and funny and utterly heartbreaking, Kaufman has the same concise style of writing as Rhodes, and every word is as rich as can be. His latest novel Born Weird is out more-or-less now – I’ve pre-ordered the Kindle version which is out on Jan 2^nd, but the hardback is already in shops.

Sunstroke and other stories by Tessa Hadley
The stories in this collection are each seemingly domesticated and commonplace and straight-forward slices of life. But each has an under-current of subversion, of taboo-breaking, and of realism – each narrator is so real and alive and known – and ever-so-slightly magical. Her work reminds me of one of my favourite writers, Katherine Mansfield, and that is always a good thing.

How Soon is Now?: The Madmen and Mavericks who made Independent Music 1975-2005

by Richard King
A history of indie music, and independent record labels, written with real heart and awe. An indie little brother to England’s Dreaming, it is naturally selective and narrow in it’s scope – otherwise King would still be writing it today, and it loses nothing by leaving out band x or band y for the sake of narrative or space.

AND 2012’s OTHER FINE MOMENTS INCLUDED:

The New Yorker Fiction Podcast
Introduced by the lasciviously-intellectually voiced Deborah Treisman, this podcast gets New Yorker short story writers – Dave Eggers, Tessa Hadley, Daniel Alarcón – to choose and read their favourite story from The New Yorker’s vast archives. Well worth subscribing to on the iTunes programme thing.

Diseases of England by The Indelicates
Parts I and II are out and are as bitter and vital and sneering and desperate as any other band releasing records ever.

American Sitcoms
I love American sitcoms at the moment. 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, The Office, Community, Up All Night, Whitney... they’re just in such a rich vein of form. Worth moving to the US for alone, I’m sure.

So yeah, here’s to 2012, thanks for all the fun, and roll on 2013, and HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

On 'Class'

The musical Chicago is quite rather good. I have seen the film and watched the musical theatre production, and I (first) begrudgingly and (then) rather over-excitedly liked it. My favourite songs are the one where Billy Flynn the hotshot lawyer does the puppeteering, and the one where it goes ‘Nobody got no class’. Google (our mutual friend) tells me these songs are called ‘We Both Reached For The Gun’ and ‘Class’.

The eponymous class of the latter song is about decency, manners, respect: classiness. That side of class is easy to define, easy to implement, and without doubt is an aspiration.

The band The Indelicates have released a song today, also entitled ‘Class’.



But their class is the one that divides rich and poor, the entitled few and the disenfranchised many. I have a massive problem with definitions of class particularly my own – I work in a non-skilled fairly poorly-paid job, I rely on Working Tax Credits and Child Tax Credits and qualify for free NHS dental care and wigs and all that, but then my parents are professionals and I own my own house – and as such it is equally as relevant a concept in day-to-day Britain as it is entirely irrelevant.

My class – Working / Middle / whatever – doesn’t affect my ability to go shopping or wear jeans or consume or just to live a normal life. But it does present obstacles, the kind that Simon and Julia Indelicate espouse: I don’t know the right people to truly succeed in politics or journalism or in the city. I don’t necessarily want to.

But say the best person in Britain, the most naturally able person to be Prime Minister or Governor of the Bank of England or Editor of The Times wasn’t able to get the opportunity to succeed in the meritocracy we pretend to live in. What if they couldn’t intern for no pay at The Telegraph, or do work experience at their own expense at Citibank, or their aunt can’t get them a job at Carlton communications? Well these are the important career, life, country-changing first rungs on the ladder that are only available to the upper class, to the few, to the rich.

We need to create a fairer pathway from education into the workplace. We need to create a fairer education system. We need... fuck, I don’t know. Something. Hope. Cos without hope we’re just treading water in a pool of wasted sweat and bitter regretful tears.

And why not buy the Indelicates new album when it comes out, too. Titled Diseases of England, it's the scathingly-despairing indie-rock-vaudeville soundtrack to the winter of our dissent, dischord and disharmony.

28-01-94

Brixton Academy
I check my pocket for the second time, the third time and I have the tickets. I’ve already spent the time from Beckenham Junction to Gypsy Hill unable to find them. Losing things is kinda my thing. But I’ve got them. It’s OK.

We get off the train at Brixton. We turn right, and right again. It’s dark, cold. Some men pogo out of the door of a pub as we walk past. We follow them. One has an Iron Maiden jacket on. We know we’re going in the right direction. We think. Matthew taps him on the elbow, that’s as far as he can reach. Hey you going to the gig? He is, yeah. We know where we’re going now. Matthew says I like your jacket and the guy says cheers, it fucken rocks, dun’it? And Matthew says something about Blaze Bayley or something and I zone out, I’m not metal, I’m indie, and I really don’t know what they’re talking about.

We walk down the road in Brixton, the main one, the high street or whatever, on our left we see the lights and the entrance of the Academy, skulking on a side road, and we cross and see Natalie and Jenny and Marie, who are in the year above us a school, and their already in the queue and we say hello, but then we realise that we’re not really being encouraged to jump the queue with them, so we skulk along the side of the building to the end and we wait for the queue to start moving.

Inside we get served, and get served again, and a grunge band play and we get served again, and we’re kinda tipsy, and we go and stand with Natalie and Jenny and Marie, and we stop being so shy, and Jenny starts getting off with some older guy near her, and we’re kinda jealous but we don’t say anything about it, and then another band come on, and they are PUNK and me and Matthew run down the front and jump up and down and up and down then they’re finished and it’s all too quick and sudden, and fuzzy, and we buy some more pints, and then we wait and wait and wait and the anticipation is turning into anxiety and impatience and someone says something about fucking Welsh wankers and too busy shagging sheep backstage and Matthew, who has been to some gigs before, he reckons they won’t be long ‘cos the roadies have sorted out the stage and it’s all ready and then, finally, 50 minutes, an hour, three pints of lager and lots of nervous jumping later they deign to walk onto the stage and we forgive them. We love them.

We push, spin, jump and shove: praise, incant, respond. We recite lyrics learnt by rote, by devotion. I hit the floor during Motorcycle Emptiness. I don’t think I care anymore.

Beckenham Library Gave Me Power

I grew up in the London Borough of Bromley. As a teenager, I don’t think that there could be a more dull place to exist.  Hanging out outside HMV in Bromley High Street and buying clothes in Cromwell’s Madhouse in The Glades shopping centre was as good as it got. I lived in Beckenham, where we had a swimming pool and a library. Lots of parks though, lots of parks. A townie nightclub in Beckenham which was raided for underage clientele with humorous coverage in the News Shopper, and an over-25’s night club (called ‘Jazz’) in Bromley. Slammin! I ended up escaping, at weekends and school holidays, to the exotic climes of New Cross and Camden, before moving away at n-n-n-n-nineteen.

Living there, I discovered politics. It was clear that we lived in a two-tier area, where social injustice rarely mattered to the Conservative MPs and Borough Council (I wrote to them from time to time), and there seemed to be an attempt to glorify in the ‘Victorian Family Values’ much-loved by the Tories at the time (Our local MP, Piers Merchant, he did his bit, and took a mistress, like all good Victorian gentlemen). Single-sex education was very popular there: I went to a ‘School for Boys’, a maroon-blazered comprehensive with delusions of grandeur. We played rugby and hockey. We wore suits to sixth-form.

And nothing ever happened. At all.

It just made me so angry. Like The Adverts’ Bored Teenagers we needed excitement and danger, and a reason to exist. I could’ve gone so many ways, I reckon. Ideally, I would have studied hard and all that stuff, but that was never for me. I discovered music, like The Clash and The Pistols and The Manics and The Levellers and Public Enemy and Credit To The Nation and Asian Dub Foundation and Blaggers ITA , and the NME and the Maker were full of politics and against the Criminal Justice Bill (later, Act, 1994). It was a time to get involved. I joined the Anti-Nazi League. I subscribed to private Eye and read The Guardian and The Independent every day. I went to loads of socialist festivals and drank lots and formed a band and skived off school to read books in the library and wrote polemic lyrics and bad poetry. I thought, maybe that I could change the world.

I went to Swansea University, to study politics. I was quite firebrand, very vocal about my hatred for the Conservatives and the Telegraph and The Times and The Sun, and was probably very rude to anyone who suggested otherwise. And then, on that glorious day in May 1997, towards the end of my first year, we got them out. We got them out! My first vote in a general election, and we’d got rid of the Tories. And then we all got complacent, didn’t we...

So, some fifteen years later, here we are with a Conservative-led government again. And it’s all going badly wrong again. Cuts in all the wrong places. Sleaze. Big businesses with sweetheart deals to save them billions in tax, while people at the other end of the social-scale are arguing with the government over pounds and pence. Disability benefits and social housing and education and the NHS are being cut and yet the money could be there, if there was even a tiniest swing from have to have-not. That Vodafone cash would go a long, long way to safe-guarding more public services than closing a bunch of libraries ever will...

I went to a comedy thing the other day. Are they called gigs? Or is it show? Oh, anyway, it was brilliant. And proof things haven’t changed. The opening act was a singer / poet / crazy lady with glitter in her hair called Brigitte Aphrodite. She performed a song about how growing up in Bromley is the most boring thing ever. My life flashed before my eyes. I bought her single. It is good.

Brigitte is touring with Orpington’s finest, Josie Long. Josie has over the years made a transition from comedian to political comedian, involving herself with campaigns such as UK Uncut, a pro-tax protest group who have sadly been given an undeserved reputation as anarchists, and now her own Arts Emergency organisation, fighting against cuts in Arts Education.

Josie was brilliant, and inspirational, and I left the show feeling so utterly invigorated. I can make changes. I can do things. I can change opinions. I can no longer afford to be complacent. I’ve never known any public figure to share all my political viewpoints, from the militancy brought on by the Royal Wedding to the love of Nye Bevan.

Socialism, as a pure form, is essentially being nice to other people, and sharing what you have. I encourage my two-year-old kid to do these things all the time. I hope he never forgets.

Book Reviews, well, sort of...

Right then. Where was I?

So I’m just about to embark on the final leg of my belated journey to getting a degree. The last course I’m taking is '20th Century Literature: stories, poems and stuff', and there is, as you may imagine - if you squint hard enough and really concentrate - a Waterstone’sworth of reading to be done. And I’ve more or less done it.

In my previous lives, I’ve reviewed records and concerts and TV shows, but never books. Here I shall demonstrate both the stupid amount of books I’ve read recently and also my madd skillz as a literary critic. I’m sure you’ll agree, having read my biting postmodernist aesthetic dialectical breakdown of the set texts that I’m a shoe-in for a ‘distinction’ come next summer.

Lewis Grassic Gibbon – Sunset Song.

Parochial proto-Irvine Welsh. Language seemingly inpenetrable, but if penetrated, very lovely and soppy and a little bit socialist.

Virginia Woolf – Orlando.

Boy/Woman skips through time and into bed. The blueprint for Captain Jack Harkness.

Daphne Du Maurier – Rebecca.

Ooh that Mrs Danvers!

Berthold Brecht – Life of Galileo.

Science and Religion, one of which I don’t understand, the other of which I don’t believe in. I believe I understood this book thing though. Could work well as a play.

Philip K. Dick – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Only if you put them into ‘sleep’ rather than ‘shut down’. Amazing book – in the sense that it explores some brilliant ideas and concepts yet at the same time it is completely rubbish and is as clunky as a dinosaur in leg-irons.

Manuel Puig – Kiss of the Spider Woman.

Mwah. Reminded me of the storytelling bits in Generation X (good). The plot certainly weaved an intricate web (sorry). xoxo

Abdulrazak Gurnah – Paradise.

Like Lord of The Rings but without the elves and the shortfolk and the talking donkey and the rings, and with more wheeler-dealing, like in Only Fools and Horses.

Pat Barker – The Ghost Road.

Hospitals, War, and random anthropological bits from the South Pacific. I liked the first two strands. The third I just wanted to wash right out of my hair.

Humbled

Tonight I went to the Welsh Millennium Centre to see Dan Rhodes. That there were other people performing was cool, but ultimately inconsequential. I certainly wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of convincing my wife to drive us to Cardiff if he wasn't on the bill. Especially with the Torchwood guys now decamped to the US - I mean, who's protecting Cardiff Bay from irregular rift activity?

I'd not heard of Rhodes until late last year, when my university tutor gave us four passages of prose to 'try on' in terms of style - one by Susan Sontag, Grace Paley, the brilliant S.J. Perelman, and all 101 words of Dan Rhodes' 'Baby', from Anthropology. The story I submitted for that assignment has already been on this blog, it's called 'Uncrossed'.

Something just clicked about it with me. The concrete surrealism, the concise and precise language, the blatantly obvious attention to microscopic detail. The empathy, the sadness, the humour, the pathos. I bought the book.

Since then, I've read everything he's written. Nothing has disappointed. I adore his digressions, an example being the lives touched by the titular character in Timoleon Vieta Come Home - each tiny bubble as well-rounded and fully developed as those surrounding the book's 'main' characters.

Rhodes has found a way to fuse the miniature perfection of short stories with the depth and length of a novel, and successfully create books that encompasses his clear talent for brevity, clarity, structure; wit, irony and utter, utter heartbreak.

Anyway, where was I...

So I went up to him at the end of the thing (show? performance? evening?) and was really rather nervous - I've never done this to a writer before, only bands, and they don't count - and asked if he would sign my copy of GOLD, and he did and we had a little chat and I went home having met my favourite author (sorry Ali Smith, sorry Douglas Coupland, you'll have to make do with 2nd and 3rd).

Everything he has written has inspired. I know as a writer I'm not 'funny', but as a reader, I do enjoy a smile with my wordplay. I try to make my own prose as tight as possible, never a sentence where a word will do. Like many new writers, I've had an over-descriptive prosaic flowery-language spell: not anymore, I'm over it now.

This is not to say that I want to bottle his literary gift and repeat and mimic and imitate and purloin: far from it. I'm not 'that' kind of writer, and while I love his stories, they aren't 'my' stories. But they are brilliant ones that even though I wouldn't / couldn't write them, I love reading them. I felt humble just shaking his hand. Why that Dan Brown fella sells more than Rhodes does, I just don't know. It's not fair.

It's late now, and I don't really have the words right now, but Dan Rhodes, honest to blog, is a fricking genius. And a really nice person too*.

The End.

* Based on reading online interviews and having a three-minute chat with him.

Bands I Love: #2 Art Brut

Art Brut are a ramshackle bunch of chancers who met in dives and bus-stops and Deptford pubs and at school and formed a band (at which point in any Art Brut article it is vital for the writer to insert the lyric ‘THEY FORMED A BAND’ in brackets to show you’re down with the kids. But I’m not, so I won’t).

They have recently been locked in recording studio by Frank Black/Black Francis/That Fella from The Pixies for a fortnight, and have just come out clutching the master-tapes for an album that is dirty and happy and melancholy and fighty and funny and reflective. And rocks.

It’s called BRILLIANT! TRAGIC! and as a title, it’s fairly accurate. It is also a landmark in indie-rock circles – it features vocalist Eddie Argos’ singing debut. After three albums of talk-singing (his natural singing voice – it’s not irony), he sings all pretty and reverbed and sensitively. It’s kinda cute.

What do you mean you have no idea who Eddie Argos is? He’s like seven-foot tall, but not in a stringy, bandy-legged Joey Ramone way, but in a man-giant way. He’s a comic-book geek, and yet a Jägermeister and red wine fuelled rock’n’roll party animal.

‘Girls don’t like him, Boys wanna fight him’ he claimed on the song These Animal Menswe@r, but a: have you seen his rather beautiful girlfriend, b: only that guy from Bloc Party wanted to fight him, and c: seriously, his girlfriend is very lovely. Christ, this guy had a proper spiv moustache and pork-pie hat phase, yet still is clearly cool.

He’s the lead singer in about a million side-projects and spin-off bands including Everybody Was In The French Resistance... Now!, Art Goblins, Spoiler Alert!, and Glam Chops, despite his previous lack of actually singing. He does it on charisma, and stage presence, and generally having lyrics that are witty, punning, realist, funny, heartbreaking, familiar and tragic. And often brilliant. He’s equally foppish and foolish, lithe and lumbering, rock star and humble indie-kid.

Eddie Argos is not his real name. His real name is Edwin Argos. He prefers the more informal ‘Eddie’. The rest of the band have suitable made-up names, too:

* There’s Freddy Feedback on bass (a girl called Freddy!), the German bassplayer, who sings along microphone-less all show long.

* Ian Catskilkin (a made-up name and he chooses ‘Ian’! Hilarious!) is the guitarist, a man who has been hit with a widdle stick, and yet knows when to rein in his rocking for some nice little melodies.

*Jasper Future (real name Jeff Fulcherington-Smyth) holds the rhythm guitar, upon which he often plays the right chords, inbetween doing backing vocals and precision pointing, in the air and at the crowd. He also does a really good ‘wait for it’ in the quiet bits of songs.

*Mikey Breyer (real name Mike Breyer – the ‘y’ is far more rock) is a stand-up drummer. Not in a comedic way, but in a standing up to play drums way. Also German.

From a post-modernist point of view, Eddie’s self-referential lyrics are not a vain or desperate attempt at meta, but are clever and genuinely warming. As he ages through the albums we leave the teenage boy still in love with Emily Kane; to a young man to idealistic to settle down – ‘People in love lie around and get fat/ I don’t want us to end up like that’; to a singer on a rock’n’roll cliché mission ‘Parents/ Please/ Lock up your daughters’; and finally get to meet the grown-up-ish Argos who now lives in Berlin with his partner ‘People in love lie around and get fat/ I think I’m OK with that’.

Did I do the ‘formed a band’ (they formed a band) bit yet? Oh. Well, the thing is, every time I hear them I’m glad they did. An energetic and explosive live band who love nothing more than to talk about mixtapes with the kids in the audience after the show; a band who combine humour and sincerity like only the very best writers; an enjoyable stomping guitar noise, jangly and angular, melodic and rocking.

If Art Brut didn’t exist, only Eddie Argos could invent them. And I love him for it.

------------------------------------------------

www.artbrut.org.uk

http://the-eddie-argos-resource.blogspot.com/

Art Brut's BRILLIANT! TRAGIC! can be bought in all good record shops. Including this one. And iTunes and whatever the kids use for their Mp3pod things.

The Comic Book to accompany this LP, featuring work by Bryan Lee 'Scott Pilgrim' O'Malley, Akira the Don, and Jamie 'Phonogram and Suburban Glamour' McKelvie, amongst others, can be bought from here.

Star Wars Day and YES to AV

Today is the 4^th of May. Some wag, a long time ago, decided that the punning nature of ‘May the 4^th’ and the Star Wars line ‘May the force be with you’ should be honoured with the declaration of this day to be Intergalactic Star Wars Day, or something, until the end of time.

You’d think that for myself, that this day would be a glorious celebration. But that’s to underestimate the power of the force. In my house, every day is Star Wars day.

And what a fine achievement it is: that the most successful film series of all-time utilizes such a combination of documentary footage, found through deep-space historical research in 1977, and isn’t one of those fictional films that seem to fill the cinema seats, and bust-blocks.

I think that’s why I love the Star Wars so much. Because I relate to these people, Han, and Leia, and Luke, and Vader, and Chewie. These are real people, living similar lives to ours, facing the same struggles that we face, but deep in history, and far, far away. These are the kind of characterisations that ‘made-up’ and ‘scripted’ films can never come close to.

I’d like to think that if I’d lived then, I’d be some sort of space administrative: writing press releases, proof-reading the Rebellion Manifesto, laminating the X-Wing user manual and ordering flea-medication for walking carpets. I think this because I side against the Galactic Empire, but am a rubbish fighter and pilot.

Tomorrow is May the 5^th. Tomorrow, we in the UK have a chance to make a significant change in our electoral procedure. We have the opportunity to re-establish democracy within our democracy. For hundreds of years, the legislature of the United Kingdom has been offered to the people with one hand, and taken away by the minority with the other.

For every act of emancipation, for those under 30, for women, for poor folk, the state still claws back even more. Our country is the United Kingdom. The Monarch still has the final word, no matter how we vote.

The House of Lords has been revamped, with the ongoing removal of hereditary peers. Yet instead Life Peers are created as a result of political opportunism, filling the benches of our upper chamber with a bunch of un-elected party cronies.

The House of Commons, ie: the bit we vote for, is just as ridiculous. We have all these wonderful ‘seats’ – that is to say, parts of the country divvyed up and gerrymandered in the pursuit of securing a power base. So few of these are ‘swing’ seats that voting in most of the country is irrelevant: in many areas a proverbial cardboard cut-out of a politician wearing the right-coloured rosette will get elected, no matter what.

And the Prime Minister, our fore-most politician and representative here on earth, well we don’t elect him – he’s chosen by the party that wins the most seats. It doesn’t even matter if his or her party failed to command 50% of the vote – regardless the winning party has near-enough unlimited power to refill the benches of the House of Lords with their highest-donating / most-loyal supporters.

We have the option of changing this, slightly – so that when I vote, my vote is not only counted, but my opinion is heard. The Alternative Vote system ensures that the majority of people in a constituency are represented by someone they chose. It’s not perfect. It’s not pure democracy, or pure proportional representation, it’s not even the Additional Member System, which I really like, but for now, it will do.

It’s certainly better, and fairer, and more representative than the awful First Past The Post system we operate now, where votes don’t count, and parties choose safe seats for their special favourites, and then promote those that fail into the ranks of the Lords anyway.

But enough about me: the Conservatives and the RACIST BNP SCUM are against it. Surely that says something, right?

In the spirit of today though, it’s worth examining the archives that Lucasfilm discovered, and see how our friends across the universe would vote.

Kashyyyk – home of the Wookies – says Rawwallawwweell to AV.

Yes, They'd rather have the Alternative Member System, or a proportionally-elected upper chamber, but anything is better than the legacy Wookie MPs who get elected no-matter-what in seats that no longer count. Also, Chewbacca would like a none-of-the- above option.

Tatooine – ruled by The Hutts – says No to AV

The Hutts love their safe seats in the Senate, and have no reason to want to change. Now, I'm not calling the Tory party a bunch of slug-like slime-oozing gangsters who only have their own interests (money, dancing girls, bloodsports) at heart, but there are similarities....

Naboo – ruled by pre-teen girls and Jar-Jar Binks’ species – says No to AV

No offence to 11 year-old girls, but they are quite easily misled. And the Binks and his underwater gang of buffoons are idiots. No wonder they say No.

Cloud City – Ruler Lando Calrissian – says Yes to AV

Lando was elected Head of State after receiving 32% of the vote in a four-candidate race. The other candidates were all more left-wing and liberal than Lando – and would never have pulled such a dodgy deal with The Empire. However, the anti-Lando vote was split, and that is why Bespin had a garrison of troops left there, and its citizens want a fairer electoral system.

Alderaan –ruled by Hereditary Royalty – says Yes to AV

Well, they would, but the selfish King decided to ignore democratic thoughts and allowed the rebellion to base their operations on his planet. And now, thanks to the awesome devastational power of the Death Star, a million voices calling out for a fair voting system were suddenly silenced....

Droids – y’know, metal robots – say Yes to AV

Droids are the second class citizens in the galaxy. The number of them who are eligible to vote is so low, that no droid representation is found in the Galactic Senate. This is why it is commonplace for many restaurants and public houses in the galaxy to bar droids and ‘their kind’ from their establishments.Droids want a balanced vote, and see the Yes to AV campaign as a building-block or stepping-stone to further progression in electoral fairness.

290411 : First Republic

A ROYAL WEDDING EXTRAVAGANZA FINAL EDITION (#6)

These are my last words on the subject. Then I can rest and get some sleep. I hope.

If you'd rather read something intellectual on the subject of the Royal Wedding, Monarchy, and Republicanism, may I point you in the direction of someone I regard as a genius, the very clever and brilliantly passionate and talented word-smith Mr. Simon Indelicate, who uses erudite sentences such as these:

The monarchy is an affront to the dignity of the free citizen. It is an offence to the law-abiding and the tax-paying that the universality which justifies their submission to tax and to law is critically undermined by the most famous of their countrymen.

If you realize that Republicanism (UK, not evil US Republicanism) is for you, then may I suggest you join REPUBLIC or, at the very least, read what they say on their website.

To summarize how I feel:

• I don't believe that there should be a Monarchy.
• I don't respect any unelected person who claims to rule over me, purely by accident of birth and the fallacy of God's Will.
• Mainly because I don't believe in God.
• And because unelected power can only be opposed by revolution.
• And I'm a pacifist.

With regards to this wedding:

• Who gets married on a Friday?
• Because that's just showing off. Why not get hitched on a Saturday?
• Then we wouldn't be forced into marking the big day with a Bank Holiday.
• Forced into a pro-Monarchy position whether we like it or not.
• And where is my invite?
• Oh yeah, I'm not a dictator with an appalling human rights record. I forgot.
• Can you genuinely think of a more effective and salient time to protest the Monarchy?
• Me neither.

With regards to the bride and groom:

• If it's love, then good luck to them. Like all couples marrying for the right reason (love) I sincerely hope that that love stays with them until the end.
• But I don't really care that they are getting married anymore than I care any other people I've never met are getting married.
• And I resent the fact that they will one day claim ownership of the land in which I live.
• Therefore, I ain't getting no bunting out.

I've peppered these articles with music videos. I recall a fantastic song called Man-Made by a band called Credit To The Nation, for which there is no YouTube video, which suggested:

Take a black woman and a black man too / give them to the Royals so they can screw / Black woman with Edward /Black man with Andrew / Then the Windsors would have some colour.../ Edward would be pleased and Andrew would be happy and gay / And they'd set the rules by which they'd played.

Now these would be weddings / sex-tapes I might be interested in seeing.

You may remember me writing "But I wish that they would do the good, honest thing and dissolve the monarchy and fuck off to Las Vegas, and run their pathetic side-show in the new ‘Buck House’ hotel and casino complex" and I stand by that, 100%.

I don't want a violent revolution. I don't want one drop of blood to spill.

But I do want the Monarchy to go away.

I'm wearing my Sex Pistols T-shirt today and going to work. Bank Holiday my arse.

Two videos. 1 obvious. 1 less so.

Repeat after me: No Monarchy.

------------

Goodnight, and mythical-invisible-white-haired-old-man-in-the-sky bless.

x

290411 : Les Misérables Destin d'Catherine Middleton

ROYAL WEDDING LIMITED EDITION #5

"Lady Di? Lady Di? RENOIR!"

She got a degree in History of Art. She could get a job at any gallery, perhaps even be the new Simon Schama. She was a fashion buyer for Jigsaw.

There are so many things that Catherine Elizabeth Middleton could do. Hell, she could go and work with her parents in their moderately successful party-bits business. And yet she's thrown it all way, she's about to make the worst decision of her life... which begs me to ask, Carrie Bradshaw style:

Seriously, Middleton, what are you thinking, marrying into royalty when you could be a successful independent woman, like Beyonce off of MTV?

After all, we all know how well some of your predecessors got on - Boleyn, Howard, Ferguson and Spencer to name a handful, and they weren't half as common as you.

Ultimately, you're giving away your life - your privacy, your enjoyment, your very being - to a supposedly more noble cause, for an alleged higher purpose, for the profits of what used to be Fleet Street.

You think it's a bit annoying now, not being able to get your security man to sweet talk traffic wardens without getting in the papers, well just you wait until you're properly institutionalised. That'll be fun.

Perfectly harmless toesucking on the beach will be front page news. Your husband will follow in Daddy's shoes and stick it to married posh girls behind your back. Every dress you wear can never be worn again.

Everywhere you go, flash bulbs and paps and respectable photojournalists and film crews and interviewers and flash bulbs and neon lights and TV presenters and news-readers will be in attendance amid the constant flash bulbs and you'll be consumed by madness and you'll never be skinny enough or you'll be too skinny and you'll throw yourself down the stairs in desperation to avoid another trip to another shopping centre to cut another ribbon because you can't do that with a broken ankle, and your kids will be taken from you and given to nanny, and sent off to public school, and your marriage will be in tatters, and you'll find yourself alone in Kensington Palace, in your private quarters. Only a butler for company. A butler and a salad. A butler and a salad and a desperate urge to get out of there, out of the stifled London, maybe head off to a fancy hotel with your lover, maybe in Paris. . . .

No.

There is an easy way out. Don't show up next Friday.

Go shopping. Go to Bijou. Go anywhere, but the church.

If he loves you, he'll understand.

If he doesn't understand, he doesn't love you.

Marriage is an expression of love, not a submission to an antiquated and obsolete nationalistic and tribal institution.

You are being served up, as the main course, for a country desperate for your beauty, sucking you dry of emotion every time you visit a sick kid in hospital, pulling sequins off your dresses at state balls, and long-lens photographing every intimate moment.

Now's your chance. Learn from the mistakes of the past. Walk away.

290411 : Repeat After Me

PART 3 of THE ROYAL WEDDING EXTRAVAGANZA

The Best-Man. Organiser of the last hurrah, looky-afterer of the rings. Who better to choose than the flame-haired, Nazi uniform (replete with optional swastika) wearing, dope-smoking, user of foul racist language that is Henry Charles Albert David of Wales. Or Harry to the lovely ladies at the bar. Hey darling, rah-rah-rah, let me buy you a drink. See this Fifty-pound note - yah, that's my Nan, ah-hah.

The amount this little bugger has done wrong is incredible, given that he is only 26 years of age. Talking of swearing and the number 26 - guess which position in the UK Top 40 this song reached back in November '91.

(Adopts mid-Atlantic phony smug voice) This week, a new entry at number 26, it's the Manic Street Preachers with 'Repeat'. . .

290411 : Elizabeth My Dear

IT'S PART II OF MY ROYAL WEDDING SPECIAL!

So, the bridegroom is the most highly-educated member of that exclusive list of cousins who are currently heir-to-the-throne. He went to St Andrews, remember? To do a degree and that.

In fact, he went to St. Andrews to do a Masters in History of Art, but then changed courses and got a 2:1 in Geography. The award of an MA is less impressive when you realise that everyone there gets an MA instead of a BA, by doing an extra year. No external interviews and applying for funding for you, eh William?

Interestingly, it doesn't really matter that he went to Eton and only got ABC on his A-Levels (private education ain't what it used to be, right?). Queenie the Queen didn't even go to school. She was home-schooled in Constitutional History and had some French au-pairs/ nannies / lackeys to teach her to speak their language.

And of course, it's this precise kind of exacting grounding in politics, theology, sociology, history, law and philosophy that you expect from a self-proclaimed ruler, isn't it? Not A-Levels in History of Art, Geography and Biology (William), a 2:2 from Cambridge (Charles, and let's face it, the quality of the tution there is world-renowned for being terrible... oh), and, erm, her own Girl Guide troop (Liz - the 1st Buckingham Palace Guide Troop).

So here to sing us out is a song with four lines, is a minute long, and the only long words are 'conscience' and 'Elizabeth'. Therefore, you'd anticipate that some of the lesser members of the Windsor-Mountbatten mob might be able to both concentrate and understand the meaning of it.

290411 : None of my Heroes Ain't Appeared on no Stamp

A ROYAL WEDDING SPECIAL EDITION

On the 29^th April 2011, the son of a family of slightly-inbred superrich toffs, and a girl from the middle-classes – a hybrid of bluestocking and blue WKD – will marry. And it appears that the Eton-educated pillock who married an affluent heiress and became Prime Minister has decided that we all get the day off to watch the extravagant nuptials on the telly. Well fuck that.

The groom genuinely believes that God – that well-known, affable and personable being of scientifically twin-studied double-blind-tested proven existence – has given him the divine right to rule, unelected and undeniable. Albeit, only after his Nan, and then his Dad, die.

I mean, it’s hard enough to justify the belief in this 'God' that many have ‘faith’ in. But that God has decided for the people of the United Kindom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, that after revolutions, wars, invasions, porphyria, haemophilia, succession acts, not allowing females to take the crown, then allowing females to take the crown, locking kids in towers, sympathizing with the Nazis, murdering wives, getting cross with the Pope and the idea / fact that we’re only one lightning strike away from John Goodman becoming king, that this William fella was the one that He up in Heaven has predestined to be King - well that takes more suspension of disbelief and literary conceit than a shit science fiction novel.

I’m sure I wouldn’t be so cross and angry if he really was just a token figure head, but constitutionally, despite the separation of powers we have achieved over the years, he will still be the person who signs the bills, the acts, the laws. He’s hardly going to sign his own Eviction of Office notice, is he?

And the amount of money we, the public, have to fork out for the Old Dear, her casually-racist consort, the twice-married philandering heir, the divorced-daughter, the son who is a friend of a paedophile and all sorts of military juntas, and the son who has failed in every career apart from cashing-in on his name, and all their assorted ex-wives and drunken-children; well that amount of money could be so much better spent.

Of course, we should remember, that God says they can be Royal. And as such, we should give them our money so they can enjoy their lives. Although, wouldn’t it be fair if they kept their nose in their bibles, their cocks in their pants, their mouths shut and their hands out of the till? That would also be what God wants, wouldn’t it? Oh, what's it called, now? Yep, being a good Christian.

I only need a pittance to survive each year, according to my employers. So why do the Mountbatten-Windsor’s need so much from the ‘civil list’ each year, when they could just sell a painting or two?

Don’t worry, though. I’m a pacifist. I’m not off on some Guy Fawkesian mission. In fact, I’ll be happily in work on this prescribed day off. But I wish that they would do the good, honest thing and dissolve the monarchy and fuck off to Las Vegas, and run their pathetic side-show in the new ‘Buck House’ hotel and casino complex.

I wish.

99 Words: The Wedding

A 99-word micro-fiction, by me.

Stephen and Rebecca met. I don’t know how.

I’ve known of him since we were little. Me and Steppy have been friends for years. He plays bass-guitar and football, and is good at numbers.

Me and Becca, we’ve never met.

It’s OK though.

I’ve seen her photo on facebook: she looks nice.

I’ve heard her in the background of a long-distance telephone call: she sounds nice, too.

She’s marrying someone that I respect and admire and love and am amused by and am in awe of: we clearly have a lot in common.

Cherish the day: relish the life.

The Girl From HMV

hmv, The Quadrant shopping centre, 9am, Monday morning: the optimal time for record-buying. All the new releases, all in a row, on the right shelves, in the right boxes, in plastic bags with my name on them behind the till. Limited editions in limited supplies, virgin vinyl waiting to be played, polythene begging to be unwrapped: teenage dreams and middle-aged regret aching to be caressed, absorbed, purchased, and heard. CD1 slips into digipak2 and there’s a coloured seven-inch and a 12-inch with entirely different b-sides. There’s always a re-mastered classic or a re-release with extra tracks or some back-catalogue gem that I absolutely need to buy. This is the most important part of my week.

μ

Flick-Flick-Inspect/Discard-Flick-Flick-BUY! I’ve got the art down beautifully, I know my timing, I know precisely how long I need to assess the sleeve of a record before I can look at the next one. It’s like Panini football stickers when I was a kid, got-got-got-NEED, whether it’s a Babes in Toyland LP or a head-and-shoulder shot of a mulletted centre-half. Heaven forbid it should be my Holy Grail: One Man Clapping on CD or ‘Suicide Alley’ on 7” or one of the shiny foil stickers with the Man United badge on it. It’s past collecting now, past an avid or keen interest. It’s an obsession, an addiction, a need to own. If I go to hmv and don’t buy anything, or at the very least place a special order to be collected in 2-4 weeks, then that’s inconceivable. That’s the opposite of commerce, of purchase power, laissez-faire economics, the opposite of me. That would be a failure.

μ

Luckily it’s impossible. There’s always a picture disc 7” or a new release CD single going for 99p. It’s like a slot-machine gambler pumping coins into the change machine. You win every time.

μ

This one time I take my girlfriend to town, so she can get her train back to where she lives. We’ve done nothing all weekend apart from watch some telly and argue. I’m claiming poverty, because I’m skint, and she’s nouveau riche. We get off the unibus, into hmv (it’s on the way to the station, and it’s Monday morning) and I just want to look and see if they’ve got the new Kenickie album, and no, I’m not going to buy it, because yes, I really do have no money, but I just want to see the price and the track-listing and your train isn’t for another half-an-hour... So I drag her in, new releases Kenickie At The Club and I pick up a copy and I want it so bad. And she doesn’t buy it for me, despite her new-found wealth and her previous dependence on my bank account for the previous year of gig-going and night-clubbing and record-buying that masqueraded as a relationship. I put it back on the shelf, and I put her on her train and I go back to hmv and buy it with the last £13.99 of my overdraft and I get the bus home and I’m happy. We break up soon after.

μ

Falling for the girl behind the till at hmv is a bad thing. She was always so happy to see me. She spoke to me. She didn’t judge my purchases. Cultivating this fantasy is worse. What started off as a cute naive crush on a record shop girl became a relationship of convenience. Imagine, not only would I be going out with a cute girl, but I’d be taking advantage of her staff discount. She must get at least 25%. It was meant to be.

μ

My bank manager was always asking to see me, writing me letters, phoning me up. He’d always ask about my finances and my overdraft. I’d tell him I get £25 a week for DJing. I don’t tell him I spend £150 a week on records. He might take my visa electron card away.

μ

Like a power-ballad or a Euro-dance-craze smash, I find myself constantly milling around the upper echelons of the singles chart. Not that I really care about the Spice Girls single (I’ve already got it), but the top 10 is right by the till. I can time my purchases so that she serves me, rather than any other member of staff. If this fails, there’s always a handy box of 7” singles on the checkout desk to serve as a time-killer.

μ

I read: NME, Melody Maker, Smash Hits!, Q, Vox, Select, Time Out, Big Issue Cymru, Record Collector. I write about music for the Swansea student newspaper. I get free records. But they are all promos and do not have exclusive b-sides or sleeve notes or sometimes sleeves.

μ

I write her a song, called ‘The Girl From hmv’. The assistant manager of hmv Swansea really likes it. It goes to number 1 on the indie download chart thing, although this is before anyone really had the internet, myself included. I don’t know if she’s heard it. I don’t know if she knows it’s about her. And I don’t care, because it’s not really about her anymore. It’s about the soulless neon industrial vapid product-shifting enterprise that hmv probably always was, but now certainly is. Where they’ll happily sell you anything and everything, just as long as you buy something. There’s no condescending looks from older staff members when you buy the latest flash-in-the-pan nonsense. No knowledgeable chats about Northern Soul or lost punk vinyl or lo-fi synth-pop. Just DVDs and computer games, hipster books-of-youthful-rebellion-of-the-movie-of-the-novel-of-the-week, oh, and some CDs. That’s what happens when you move to a bigger outlet in the mall. Change. DVDs and computer games and change.

μ

I buy my records online now. Real records, not MP3s or iTunes. You can’t put an MP3 on a bespoke shelving unit, you can’t store a WMA in a cupboard, you can’t touch and smell an AAC file. Roughtrade.com and amazon and eBay, direct from the band or straight from the label. No girls behind tills to impress, no buying for the sake of buying (except occasionally to save on postage), no back catalogue impulse buys, no buying for the strange band name or the pretty artwork. No buying because the guy who works there just knows that you’ll love it and really thinks that you should buy it.

μ

My friend, Keith TOTP, tells me that there are no record shops in Camden, where he lives. Camden Town, home of Britpop and MTV and nightlife and gigs, has no record shops. There may as well be none in Swansea too. This makes me sad. Richer, but sadder.