Outland Station

Posted on 1 April, 2023 by Editor

The train skips in your head and stations bloom overnight. You’ve never been here before, never stepped from the security of the warm carriage onto neat blocks of moonlight, never faded after the manner of breath on copper. Flagstones are soft as sponge, and you sway like a balloon tied to an iron railing after a party. It’s tempting to turn but the train’s long gone and even the tracks have been swept away, replaced by stretched magnetic tape that twists the sound of grass growing into something approaching words; something about the rain now standing and the accumulation of unavoidable delays which could well see you stranded here for the rest of your life. Your train of thought slips. You’re sure there was once a train – how else would you have got here? – but the walls absorb all certainties, and you stumble as you search your pockets for a ticket, or a timetable, or a guidebook, or one good reason why you ever imagined that this might be a station. By the bombsite, its billboards bright with cynical sleight of hand, a balloon bobs amongst the broken bottles and razor wire, as dangerous as breathing and as inevitable as falling down.

 

 

 

Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor

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(YAWN) We NEED To Talk About Marx

Posted on 1 April, 2023 by Editor

  

Marx? The YAWN is no acronym. Just the mention of Karl Marx sends waves of weariness through people’s synapses, either through ill-informed misconceptions, or links with Communist or Socialist ideologies that (except for the corrupt) invariably result in the infliction of poverty or suppression of the general public. Neoliberal capitalists believe they’ve put Marx to bed, done and dusted. Marxist-moralists, politically outdated fuddy-duddies and King Cnuts of the militant Left now resemble stupefied solo desperados, standing at busy intersections wearing ‘The End Is Nigh’ placards with progress whizzing past in all directions. But to constrict Marx to these representations would be the gravest mistake for the state of today’s global economy and for all capitalists.

Marx’ call for the end of capitalism is not only more valid than ever, his analysis of what prevents it NOW offers something every capitalist dreams of.
___ 

The death of Marx

In the trend for right-wing politics, the Left are always denigrated. As they surged in public movements in nearly every country at the turn of this century, in the United States Trump (he wasn’t the first) hoodwinked blue-collar Americans to believe he was their new saviour, before slipping them a ‘Mickey.’ This gave license for every other political regime to emulate his clear prejudices and the remaining Left had to compromise to keep emergent right-wing wolves from the door. This tactic quenched the tsunami of public protest so dramatically, what were successful rapid gains in socialist or libertarian change – notably in Iceland, Greece, Spain and Italy – were reduced to flash-in-the-pan uprisings. Capitalism finally stood unassailable as everybody’s saviour, shackling all of society to protectionist fear and the new global cold-war.

The Labour left in the UK have many progressive policies but are marginalised by their own party, despite the palpable public outrage at the last two decades of damage wrought by overt right-wing politics, dressed up as centre-ground, to where the greatest exponents of democracy and multiculturalism now use prejudicial language and tactics against liberty, without any backlash. Slogans like ‘levelling up’ or any ‘moral’ response to the ravages of capitalist enterprise, even when the outrage is from all quarters, is jumped upon in media as a swing to the left in pejorative terms. While capitalists wreak the most heinous havoc in world history, above ground, their traumatised captives seem to have no other option than to cover their heads and constantly chant to their captors “yes, I believe in trickle-down, I believe in trickle-down.”

Since the global economy is a game of Hungry Hippos between the elite 1%, more people want an end to the machine that feeds them. Capitalists have to convince us that we are in constant crisis, our labour has no value and ‘the 99%’ depend upon their mythical philanthropy, while they strip the planet for all its worth. Every compelling ecological, political and economic proposal has fallen on deaf ears, leaving everyone confounded as to what is now realistic, or resorting to what has now been deemed ’lawless’ protest, when the real lawlessness is yet to descend.  

The labour crisis and diminution of work practices, product quality and human rights being invaded by ‘democratic’ governments has forced campaigners to reassess what Marx predicted, because he made such thorough predictions for this eventuality. In him they see the greatest anti-capitalist and harbinger of its demise, its executioner. Overlooking the human elements that corrupted all former efforts to implement what Marx proposed for a fair society, regression to previous practices – workers owning the means of production, resurgent Trades Unions refuelling the unceasing struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie – seem to be the only fall-back resistance called for by the vast majority of society. But since the elite no longer need the public, all gloves are off and hypocrisies de riguer. But it is another subterfuge to demark this as a Right v Left conflict. It is now a 99% + 1% survival conflict and we need something (not someone) to take the conflict out of it.

Marx peered BEYOND this conflict. People of all political persuasions should take a second look at what he ultimately worked out, BEYOND ‘DAS KAPITAL;’ a potential where the validity of all formal and informal labour could be self-determined. But what leads to it and how we get there now is not entirely from Marx. His predictions extended beyond pure economics to mathematical analysis and anthropology. In Grundrisse – his notes on his previous works, published posthumously – he identified two obstacles that once surmounted would eventually render practical accounting inconsequential or redundant. His projection was analysis of the externalities of uninhibited generation of wealth that ultimately alters people’s values. The two obstacles preventing it can now be removed.
___ 

Glass half empty

Neoliberalism and financialization are the tools that finally allowed capitalists to put the nail in the coffin of Marx ‘Labour Theory of Value’ where workers supplied the means to produce profit. (See International Times article – ‘Economic Stockholm Syndrome’ ). This is something many economists and socialists still cling to as a governing principle. But the dynamics have changed; labour simply does not equate as a significant player in the global economy since the latter part of the last century. If the population was a bathtub and capitalism water, Pythagoras would not be able to wet his whistle and labour’s contribution to global wealth would be an annoying dripping tap. But he would be alarmed at the conservative displacement of the global economy. So should capitalists, it is counter to their instincts and advantage, but this is their trade off after all. Whatever catastrophe happens, the elite will just carry on enjoying the ride until it ends – we’re all going to die anyway. What more do they need?

On this basis, it is safe to say that capitalists incur far greater losses (potential profits) than the profits they currently generate by alienating 99% of the potential consumer-base (in broad terms). This sounds like a no-brainer, but politically and practically it is no longer consumer numbers that dictate wealth but abstract numbers.

This is why monetary economists offer no immediate definitive solution to resolve the abuses of money. Clamouring for another form of distribution merely sustains the machine and prolongs our agony. People who protest ‘cash is king’ conveniently forget who provides it. Is that enough for a dying world? Most seem to think not, so why do we continue to look to such people? All they offer is inadequate painkillers for a tooth that is long overdue being pulled. But is capitalism itself evil and its decay so unredeemable? The shocking answer is no. What Marx’ understood was what it would call upon to overthrow it, or for it to collapse. But his analysis reveals a way capitalism can be used to extinguish itself. 

This century of expansive bloody conflict shows it’s a mistake to leave elite capitalists out of the picture. Without something that can initially improve the monetary economy, enabling capitalists to consider MORE PROFITABLE economic policies FREE from monetary restriction, but CONDITIONAL upon developing greener alternative industries, economic revolution will be far more protracted, if it happens at all. They must also be advantaged by the dual-choice of monetised and non-monetary options and be willing catalysts in this green revolution. A parallel economy could justifiably be an EITHER/OR dictatorship to replace their power, but folly and bloodshed lie down that route. Making it an inclusive no-brainer offering greater prosperity, but actively dissolving the current industries that generate the largest profits – fossil fuel, arms, drugs, pharma, financialization – averts such precious time-wasting. This then is no “de-growth” or ‘anti-profit’ stance, but a rapid expansion of options that dis-incentivizes, dilutes and dissolves monetary enterprise, as a matter of personal choice, without having to say goodbye to a single penny of existing monetary wealth. Still yawning?
___

Glass half full

Economists that more recently recognised the value of calculating externalities for economic enterprises are more likely to get what Marx led to than those that refuse to think outside of monetary and material exchange values. To them, abstract simply does not exist; everything must have tangible value even if those values are a fiction. In recent history, the analysis of externalities developed from: 1 – calculating the effects of an economic policy upon variables with NO PROFITABLE ECONOMIC VALUE related to projected profits / costs, social dynamics and the aims of an enterprise; to 2 – calculating how NON-VALUED variables could have PROFITABLE impact on an enterprise agenda, economically and/or politically. This forms a serious part of the manipulation of the global economy and population today. If we fail to take this calculation into consideration, we can no longer make reliable arguments of how economy works.

The lesson we take from calculation of externalities, (the socio-political displacement of economic agendas), AND the process of neoliberalism that exploits this, is that NON-VALUED INFLUENCES PASSIVELY CREATE PROFIT, evidenced by all the trades unions, strikes and protests currently fighting for fair recognition and plain practicality. Think of all the ways this happens socially and commercially and let the extent of that activity sink in a little.

Many Marxists claim this profit is the “surplus value of labour” in the production of material commodities and services contributing to the wealth of the elite. THIS IS A FALSE CLAIM. We know that price is no longer governed by labour, market supply, or demand. Its value is simply created as an abstract instrument to control the moving parts of that market affected by global variants in the financial market; not the material value of a commodity but the fluctuating and chosen monetary value for any fleeting transaction. The whole banking system, stock exchange, rent-economy and current energy crisis illustrate this, (the UK’s energy market a smash-n-grab raid in comparison with the effects upon continental Europe). So we are familiar with price and costs as abstract processes. THESE ARE DETERMINED BY SIMPLE CHOICE. Since price and wealth-generation became de-coupled from labour-value to an abstract form, this so called contribution of “surplus value” is now the equivalent of a child offering a billionaire a lollypop. This is what gives neoliberals the power to turn the whole globe into a gig economy, dismantling the staple industries set up for public good. We really have to get over ourselves on this misconception to be realistic. But the trick we have missed from this process is that ECONOMY IS A MATTER OF HUMAN CHOICE – INVENTION.

Trump’s trick of successfully subverting the interests of the left was a deceit, but can be turned on its head by the 99% to appropriate capitalists’ interests for their genuine good, not by deceit but, by collectively ASSIGNING an abstract system of accounting, not based on material value, to the unvalued labour of the 99%, forming an ACTIVE parallel non-monetary economy (PNME), then dictating its terms.
___

Resurrecting Marx (not Marxism)

What Marx ultimately pointed to is still valid. Not the workers owning the means of production (just one of the options the PNME would open up), but for PEOPLE in general to practically solve the two key obstacles Marx identified to individual generation of wealth and the revolution against capitalism. We can therefore re-establish what Neoliberalism invalidated, without having to lift a finger against neoliberals or the monetary economy.

The two obstacles…

1 – “The revolutionary overthrow of capitalism can and will only be achieved with the end of work as a means of social control—the abolition of the material grounds of the concept of abstract labour.”

The ‘material grounds’ here must refer to the material differences distinguishing abstract labour from formal labour – a dissolution of this prejudice. Those material grounds are manifest through money, payment and material or economic advantage. Since Neoliberalism has already brought us broader disparity than ever before, it has also brought us closer in concrete terms to this necessity. So, to achieve the abolition of this exclusivity it is pointless just to replicate money in any other form; the solution has to provide a realistic alternative to money whilst abandoning any form of ‘commodity-value,’ remaining separate from the monetary economy whilst engaging with businesses within it.  The emphasis here has to be on abolishing the “material grounds.” Devising a method that is basic numeracy with no value, (as in equations, for the purpose of accountable language only) allows it to – 1) be autonomously generated; 2) not require pre-existing budgets or accounts to be deducted from; 3) be unrestricted; its generation only limited by the everyday activity of every personal choice, that can also combine towards collective goals (including requisition of major industries); 4) utilise collective-monitoring to protect against centralised or third-party control.

There are countless advantages over money in doing this. It can always outperform money and it is not subject to all its peripheral controls and effects. THIS CHOICE is what has been directly under our noses since the advent of biometric and other technologies, all perfectly functioning in ways we already accept and use. It affords us a sufficiently RAPID proposal for urgent economic revolution that leaves no-one out, utilising proactive options for individual choice. But it achieves way beyond what anyone can imagine when they constrain their thinking to only monetary and material values and practices. (See illustrated supplement ‘Turning Costs to Earnings: the Parallel Non-Monetary Accounting System’). A free, self-determining economy where exchange becomes abstract, almost immaterial.

2 – “…to revolutionise the bourgeois ECONOMICALLY.”

How? By using their core motivations to offer them this new colossal economy way superior to anything money can do, that frees them AND ALL PEOPLE of its constraints by its ability to also… 5) revolutionise how commercial industries generate profit, freeing up rapid green industrial transformation; and 6) radicalise the employer/employee relationship: since employers will no longer be paying wages and labour will have no cost to them, they will be offering terms and conditions, not dictating them. The wealth offered by the 99% will then effectively invert neoliberalism and re-validate Marx’ ‘Labour Theory of Value’ but in a different form.

The other advantage is that the international global community of the 99% can stipulate its terms of engagement without threatening the monetary economy. It will immediately empower communities to change their political systems; eradicate taxation; take back control of utilities and create a new green industrial revolution that supports every green initiative and publicly owned/run industry; be more profitable; and directly influence political choice at every level. It will economically engage every living individual. Think of its effect on dissolving international conflicts, globalisation and national protectionist politics; everyday people from all nations being lifted out of poverty overnight, no longer having to compete for the spoils of the rich or tolerate official corruption. Access to individual prosperity is what Marx envisioned would free us and get our minds away from commodity valuation to placing true value on people’s pursuits and qualities. The advantages of a simple numerical system and existing technology is its immediacy, no requirement for re-education, and its rapid effect upon the monetary economy.

This is how we “abolish the material grounds for the concept of abstract labour” and “radicalise the bourgeois, economically” making ALL labour rewarding, inclusive and most of all profitable not only for employers, but directly for the individual. Suppression of abstract and reduced labour already works passively but only marginally for the 1%; it’s their virtual accounting that makes them rich. Capitalists everywhere should be calculating what a resource-preserving system can open up for them when the 99% are freed of all the anomalies, controls and dependencies of money.

What Marx and others imagined but could not foresee was THE MEANS of achieving this WITHOUT any socially-conforming paradigm or community; or to do so without opposition from the bourgeoisie. The parallel non-monetary economy has always existed since people decided to trade goods and services – pre-capitalism. Until now it has not been possible to assign it an active role in generating personal and collective wealth. Now it can be achieved without any corroboration with the financial elite or the governments in their pockets. Even if they initially object, they will soon tag along when they see how rapidly a non-monetary system supplants ANY need for their money. They will diminish within the centrifuge of the spiralling expanding non-monetary economy and recovery not only of our ecosystem but the SOLVENT global monetary and non-monetary economies running side by side. This is what the abstract Parallel Non-Monetary Economy offers. This is the watershed moment for all human beings and our planet. It requires a watershed solution.
___

Why we need to talk about Marx NOW

ONLY by the general public coming together to form this economy will it happen, because the wealthy, for whom money still works, will never have reason to form it. They see its potential, hence some governments are already planning CENTRALISED crypto banking, but only as a greater control of monetary access and activity. Money’s usefulness will diminish even to the wealthy, as an inept way to generate profit in contrast to the rapidly expanding parallel non-monetary economy. We need to project, as did Marx, the effects this limitless non-monetary profit would have on all business of the elite and the 99%; calculate the extent and potential achievements of liberated formal and informal labour.

It only needs ONE sizable collective to adopt the new active Parallel Non-Monetary Economy (PNME) – such as the NHS, UN organisations, charities, international campaign organisations, autonomous communities, refugee camps, nations obliterated by natural or man-made devastation, communities oppressed by minority militants and drug lords, (their support networks would rather get wealthy from personal pursuits than putting their lives on the line to dispossess people and their communities). When people see what it achieves overnight, it will rapidly become the new abstract-based economy of the 100%, replacing all value-based economics and economic hardship once and for all time.

This is no Marxist dream, but it owes its viability to his genius beyond “Kapital” to an impartial, inclusive, autonomous economy. After that, let’s see where it takes us. All we need to do now is WAKE UP and smell the roses.

 

 

 

Kendal Eaton

 

For more details on the effect of the PNME on social mobility and the monetary economy, see the book ‘A Chance For Everyone: The Parallel Non-Monetary Economy’ by this author, (Sounding Off UK Publications: 2020 revised edition); or follow these links for discussions / posts and comments / video / book downloads and illustrated supplements –
achanceforeveryone.com  or Facebook Group – Parallel Non-Monetary Economy of the 99%

 

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Say Gay

Posted on 1 April, 2023 by Editor

dedicated to my dear friend and rebel rouser Keith Gann, 1958-1990 

On July 1, 2022, the Florida legislation known as the “Don’t say gay” law went into effect. A lesbian teacher is forbidden to say she has a wife if her third-grade students ask if she is married. An elementary-age school girl who has two dads cannot tell anyone at school. A principal can out a gay student to their family even if that student is not out at home. This rule is expanding to all grades. States across the United States are following Florida’s lead. 

…if it is of such a nature that [the machine of government] requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience 

 

Let us all say it together

GAY!

Louder. Let them hear it from Florida to Alaska

GAY GAY GAY GAY GAY

We affirm the beauty of samesexness

Gay love is gaylove and it is love

Queerlove is alive and well in this America

Queersamesex love is the thread that stiches this our Republic whole

We menlovingmenwomenlovingwomenbilovinggenderqueerloving beauties have always been and will always be

You cannot pass a law to make us disappear

We are alive and we love and oh my god

WE ARE LOVE

Bilove—menlove—womenlove—we are the full goddamned spectrum of LOVE.

So legislate that.

Legislate that all love is sacred

Legislate that lesbiangaybigenderqueer love is the national treasure

Legislate parks and national registries and museums and archives and save the menlovingmenwomenlovingwomenbilovinggenderqueerloving beauties with the care of saving the Bald Eagle

Erect statues through the land of men kissing men, women kissing women, all the permutations of queer love kissing one another made into marble and bronze to tell every budding little queer soul for generations to come that they are beautiful, they are cherished, they are fucking loved

Legislate that

Queerlove is in our souls and souls need to be free

We will love lusty the way Walt Whitman taught us

        souls open to love

arms open to love

        thighs open to love

        mouths and eyes and ears and every single cell of our body electric open to love

Love is our past

Love is our present

Love is our future

Love is our nature

Love is global

When we say GAY, we say LOVE

We fancy-free menlovingmenwomenlovingwomenbilovinggenderqueerloving beauties are a glorious fireball and our delicious light will never be put out

 

 

 

 

 Michael Kiesow Moore

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Persona of Feelings

Posted on 1 April, 2023 by Editor

 

Let me pour today
And never be empty.
Let me catch a sight
And say that I still care.
Our past was a dwelling
Far from the home.
The seven seas,
The fortune tales
All heard journey
Recollected today.
A different image,
A close affection
I have treasured
From faraway feelings
Brought near.
Like a heard melody
Taking away the pain
Of every ordinary day.
A bright day will dawn.

 

 

 

Copyright Sushant Thapa
Biratnagar-13, Nepal

 

 

 

.

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Puppet Life : Punishment of Luxury

Posted on 1 April, 2023 by Editor

Studio version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifQciC6Z9n4 

PUPPET LIFE

Here they come. They’ll never take me away

Wires stick through my soul, my actions are controlled
Turning me from free man to puppet life suspended,
Suspended!
In puppet life!
Puppet life!

Your demands are my role, lost in space and time
I crawl for you
Once I had my own mind but in your sewer, I was blinded
Wallowing around like an albino crocodile
In puppet life
Puppet life

I used to laugh and make the sun shine
But then you come and made me freeze
I haven’t had a friend for such a long time
Cut the strings, free me please, oh please, I beg you

Once my world was wild but clear
No-one over me to watch and overhear
Now I have only dreams to sell
I’m going cheap at the gates of hell, at the gates of hell! Hell…

Our bodies can take no more
The fascist always ends up on the floor
Our day will come we pray, I’ll be OK when I’ve
Been mended, mended
But until then I will be swinging on your rope
With no hope
All I have, all I know are puppets.

Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUjTg8Hmeqk

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SLIPPING THROUGH SOULS

Posted on 1 April, 2023 by David Erdos

 

 

On FATED BEAUTIFUL MISTAKES – the new album by The Band of Holy Joy (Tiny Global 2023)


A stuttering violin ushers us into a stately piano as LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S
Melodic refrain claims the heart. To start The Band of Holy Joy’s new album,
A collection of soul-shots and heart-shots; each picture framing the name

Of love’s claim through song art. Singer Johny Brown croons uncertainty’s
Blue as cheeks redden against separation’s cold and the light of his lover
Signalling to him from the dark. The music strengthens and swells,

Like all waves, washing us clean to make classics as the heart’s lonely
Lighthouse calls for the stain of love’s sea to leave marks. You can see
The deep night and wand-stirred clouds, mixed and velvet,

And follow the guiding light of all lovers as this holy band play and preach
About the religion within and of how you can be lost at sea in the city
And a man who can ‘never find the right words to say’ lets love teach.

James Stephen Finn’s guitar paints a scene with it’s string-led sprinkled spillage
In NEW YORK ROMANTIC  in which a ‘gorgeous cascade of pavement hearts
That form a cavalcade’ sees Brown find images from the walls and special calls

Of this city, from ‘phlegm, spleen and matter..to becoming the very star
Of his (own) time. ‘ This is glorious 80s pop, full of shoegaze shimmer,
And something reminiscent of any anthems star-sparked climb; a song

To be sung as you angel up the aesthetic of both place and person,
Chalking ‘a pretty heart on dirty pavement/while shaking my cane’
Top Hat tipping to Astaire, Reed and Warhol, as well as any and all

Holy hipsters that emerge through the mouth from Brown’s mind.
Mark Beazley’s bass and Andy  Gallop’s drums coalesce as they do
On each song and record. From chord to crescendo everything within

Is heart-judged. As Pete Smith’s organ and Basia Bartz’s strings soar
And Terry Edwards’ sax slides through the structure to make the sounds
Which aspire and inspire too. Dark lines smudge. A CITADEL OF

CROOKED SOUL charges in from the mist of mournful chords to insistence
As the Songspeiler wants to  ‘live in a yard/Where I can play my battered
guitar/Loudly in the sun/ And take psychedelics in my own time/And live

for passions of the heart..’ It’s a call as well as an image of freedom
In which the crooked soul as creative is Messianic, almost. An emblem
For an age which wants to be both streamed and then streamlined,

Dared by a dreamer who would rouse a prior time in his toast.
The music points the way home to some private cathedral;
A citadel for the denied who are fighting to ‘dance in this monsoon’

Of a world too soon sold and solved for the mainstream apart from
The mysteries Brown uncovers as they ‘play out under the moon.’
MERSEY FERRY ON RIVER THAMES is a synth-siren call over Finn’s

Guitar picking, with fiddle sailing on musical breeze and bright note.
While OUR FLIGHTY SEASON IN THE DIRTY SUN is swagger and swoon
As sax singing. ‘Don’t go far/Strange as you are’ says the lyric,

Containing as it does so all of the secret joys true love wrote.
There is sway through the sax, just as there is swing and Sinatra,
A jauntiness almost as waters separate from mistakes,

Which fated or not, remain both beautiful and transgressive
As around the ear the air changes because of the choice
This band makes. Thanks to Brian O Shaughnessy’s spotlit production,

Feet-tapping, we’re free to blur the murk which surrounds us.
As ‘magic stars’ mark this path the Band of Holy Joy send us skywards,
While crossing streams, rivers, oceans to get to the place the heart quakes.

And so ends Side One in this bright return to the album. As CIRCUS FOLK
Join us, at the start of Side Two we are set for ‘the slapstick turd’ and
‘sense of the absurd’  to define us, as we regale in love’s laughter

Made by untamed hearts once they’ve met. The music is strident.
It moves. It is carnival and soul-chorus, as well as the perfect companion
For the pity and pith in Brown’s words. Which one hears once more

In CITY PEOPLE which has a touch of Bowie’s Heroes. The pulse
And the purpose of an anthem for all fills the air. As lovers cojoin
And the chance to connect calms the tempest of loneliness, vision

And the desire to kiss, carve and care. One can hear everything
In the purity BOHJ has perfected. Within Inga Tillere’s art and images
And across all their music, as both beauty and ugliness stir

The soul-soup we sup to see both sides of existence,
From the appropriation of ‘shimmering style’ to the pissing
Ón every shred of meaning you ever had,’ man’s myth blurs.

And woman’s too, as well as transgender, for this sauce is resourceful;
A Warlock’s brew to be sure, powering all and disarming fools
In an instant as we ‘revert to our cynical sport’ played on pitches

Erected behind every door.  AN INSTAGRAM MOON is sax spun
And then chiming Lotus Eaters style language. Brown philoso-spies
On an age which rather see a picture of the moon than it’s surface,

Or who see themselves as the planets around which orbits form.
It is song as sage, seeking an age which discovers instead of
Disclosing the shallowness after substance which the rest of us

Duly mourn. THE CURVE OF THE BAY is bright stars, synthed
From the edge of the water; a snapshot of transcendence which lifts
The eye, ear and heart. While THE FULL BLOOM OF ROSES extends

Its near whistling synth line into warnings that if we are not
Careful the meaning we share will be lost. In which love is the flame,
Firing from earth, felt in flowers and where dreams drawn

In notebooks become both design and desire for the demands
Of love and truth’s cost. BABYLON FAREWELL sounds so sweet
But here is Brown’s blackest lyric. As he ‘leaves this bad city

 And moves back to Hell.’ Sick of fairytales for the so called sacred days
We’re all sharing, this song ends the album with two of the Band
Of Holy Joy’s greatest strengths, the sheer mastery of the magic

Within music masking and the song spells of its singer
Whose powerful words grant thought length. For here is anger
And loss, rancour and rhyme, freedom, fire. The mistakes we make

Send us higher, away from the earth into dream. Which is where
Beauty begins. Only a band this holy can help us, for as we transpire
Truth transports, love is scheme. This albums slips through your soul

And gifts it new colour. If that’s a mistake, then embrace it.
We should stumble on still. Mistakes gleam.

 

 

 

                                                                           David Erdos 31/3/23

 

 

https://bohj.bandcamp.com/album/fated-beautiful-mistakes

https://www.wegottickets.com/event/573973#

.

 

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REID ON

Posted on 1 April, 2023 by David Erdos

 

(i.m. Keith Reid, 19th October 1946- 23rd March 2023)

 

Keith Reid died last week and took a nation’s lost language
With him; one part ode, the next psychedelic, his way with a word
Made each notes placed under the keys selected by Gary Brooker,
Which then began to seep through them as if there were sound

And sea waves as he wrote. Holocaust haunted the dark in his poem
Lent prose was his father’s. And yet as son and survivor Reid versed
A strange time, by unleashing trapped thought and exposing it all
To air’s acid, or rather, revelation’s air which in sharing made

Both stab and scream sound sublime. Now A Whiter Shade of Pale
Makes more sense, as does Homburg, frankly, as those cartwheels across the floor
Ape ghost movement and the Grand Hotel shimmers while succumbing
To Shangri-la like dissolves. The man moves through the myth

Of his own non-appearance, for rarely if ever forthcoming, his blurring
Of backgrounds roused secret meanings that no sense or study
Or biography could resolve. Unlike Goffin’s King, or George Gershwin’s
Ira; unlike Sammy Kahn, or Hal David, Don Black or Tim Rice, 

Reid boiled the real until obscurity’s steam was verse vapour.
While other lyricists watered, Reid was stone and sand and black ice.
How can you write In Held Twas I and You’re the Voice for John Farnham?
Talent, craft, concentration, and some kind of soft vice to hold vision

As the sixties slipped into pap. But like those Brill Building boys,
Two of whom were Lou Reed and Paul Simon, Keith kept the contract
With both the surreal and pop’s crap. He served the song,
And gave music as meal its word dressing. Language as instrument

Started with writers like him. He spun lines. An ordinary bloke,
Whose linguistic whims whipped up whirlwinds in which observations
From the eye arced in triumph as if imagination itself felt designed.
If Bernie Taupin wrote words that gave Elton John his wide journey,

Reid opened up worlds to walk through, and made the commonplace
Alien. Whether it was Homburg’s ‘lipsticked unmade bed,’ or
Long Gone Geek’s ‘weird goings–on at the jailhouse,’ Keith broke free
From convention before his body began failing him.

Now, the pen is poised, paused;  a sword seeking the secret stone
To return to. In the mask of mist he’s now wearing the courts
Of Kings Arthur and Crimson and Procol Harum become the homes
And safe harbours where Art’s carrying craft and star vessel

Can now at last dock and sail in. The light fandango’s been skipped.
Neptune got to ride his last mermaid. And now, one week settled
Another writer achieves frequency. His words are part of your ear,
Emblems from an age we have squandered. Now, removed,

He reminds us that home may well be where the heart is,
But it is the soul which survives us, and for that sweet, strange essence
There is no end or location. For death is bandmate and agent
Securing art’s future, and its ultimate tenancy.

 

 

                                                                               David Erdos 1/4/23       

 

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BIPPETY AND BOPPETY TALK ABOUT FRUIT

Posted on 1 April, 2023 by Editor

– Possibly plum, I think.
– Or peach, perhaps.
– Strawberry.
– Technically not a fruit.
– We shall let that pedantic comment pass by unremarked.
– Let’s stick to the rules.
– Tomato.
– I fear you are toying with me.
– Be thou my plaything . . .
– Of course, Carmen Miranda knew all about fruit.
– Indeed. Her undergarments were very fruity.
– I think you will find it was her hat.
– Not in the film I saw.
– Are you sure it was Carmen Miranda?
– That’s what it said, although the credits were in Japanese. And she wasn’t wearing a hat. Or very much at all.
– We digress. Courgette?
– Cucumber.

 

 

Martin Stannard

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DREAM STORY – OR WHATEVER

Posted on 1 April, 2023 by Editor


The action starts here!
And we can bring you the latest!
Oh right – how are things?
It’s been called a perfect storm
It’s been called a dream story or whatever
It’s so shocking as to impress at first glance;
A very alarming incident with flashing images
An absolute howler with distressing details, and there’s
A big buzz around a day filled with confusion and horror.
So, we’ll be going on a journey to find out why
Chasing down answers, hearing about the challenges:
And we’ll be asking why a lot more needs to be done.

Yeah that is amazing!
Stay with it? Heck, yes.
And you know what? They did.
The question now arises: What does this all mean for us?
Even if the mood music is more positive
Many scenes will shock some and dismay others.
We’ll examine the impact on low-budget whodunits
On poetry-in-motion, on fancy-free dough-balls and
On choosing the right path in life – or whatever.
But, look – for the crème de la crème – 
For the speed freaks and for gym managers
It’s a game of who blinks first.

How does that make you feel?
It’s just so exciting I’m nervous already!
Impossible to tell from the body language, yet
It’s striking to see weird concrete forms emerge
As spooky icebound spirits – all mist and murk, and
Hill fog – it’s a jaw-dropping entrance – or whatever.
Hello! Hellooo! How’s that for a cheeky little bonus?
When life gets messy press firmly to activate,
Yeah, absolutely! Crack open the fizz!
Take it forward and slowly get a wriggle on
Hit the groove and what else? Game on! Weeee!
And you know what? You didn’t cry, so well done.

Yep, next question – or whatever:
Will lessons be learned?
Absolutely! Yes absolutely! One hundred percent!
Well let’s try – this is where it’s at – or whatever
No worries! One! Two! Three!
Be seeing you!
What are you talking about?
How serious do you think this is?
All together now! One! Two! Three!
Sorry we have to leave it there but
Do join us next time.
Stay cool.

 

 

A.C. Evans

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Gothick Phantasms

Posted on 1 April, 2023 by Editor

(being a short narrative of actual events)

 


The Combe

 

Now that we are all sitting around the campfire, gather closer, for a curious tale needs to be told this witching hour. About a strange and secretive place. A romantic faerie-like glen of great beauty, hidden in forgotten woods. Unease greets the wanderer as they walk amongst dense ancient yews that cut them off from the outside world so effectively, along a broad rutted track so little frequented, it is quite possible to visit here without meeting another living soul during the day. But, in the dead of night, when the Combe is darkened by the shadows of the great rocks and tall trees with their overhanging limbs across the pathways whispering to each other, begrimed with grains of poison in the bark and gleaming like witch dust, all around, a sepulchral silence, broken only by the occasional hooting and wailing of night birds, the flutter of a leaf, the creaking and crunching of undergrowth beneath the tread of some four-footed prowler, the rustling of foliage by birds, scared at your approach, overgrown with brambles and rank vegetation, that you could not proceed fast for fear of stumbling. The place assumes a different character. Dark shadows flitting in the distance, but never really seen. A place with decaying air and stifling atmosphere, providing the perfect abode for those who worshipped the darkness rather than the light.

The year is 1776, James Stevens, squire of Chelvey and a gentleman of independent means who had amassed considerable wealth before he retired from business in the city of Bristol enjoyed his walks that he took alone in the glen whilst listening to the birds singing, lightening his heart.

Today, St: Nicholas’ Church clock solemnly sounded from its pinnacled tower as the squire entered the glen dressed in his finest dark blue frock coat, underneath he wore a white linen shirt, yellow waistcoat and buff breeches with boots, a white wig on his head with a plain black cocked hat, an agreeable negligence in dress typical of the English country gentleman, walking on along the rutted track. Remembering the church with its long pointed arches, flying exterior buttresses, stained-glass windows and ribbed vaults. Then, letting his thoughts wander back to the other day. He had walked this way then, when he heard the sound of a loud scream. Thinking that it was a fox, but unlike any that he had ever heard before, he had walked on. Enquiring when he arrived home in the village of what he had heard, he was told that it was an apparition known as the ‘Phantom Girl’ and it was thought to be that of a young woman who had killed herself by jumping off of Eagle Rock in the Combe after a love affair ended in tragedy. He had also been told about a ‘ghostly hunt in full cry’ led by a headless huntsman that had been seen in the Combe, which reminded him of the ‘Wild Hunt’ in the south of the county, where spectral riders and hounds are abroad on Winter nights and wondered if this was not in fact just a reinterpretation of the same tale. Stevens had also heard another paranormal tale when visiting Ye Olde Sun Inne at a near-by village, where loose tongues would relate the story of a group of children who went picking primroses in Goblin Combe where airy grasslands above contrasted dark woodlands below and the sea wind sweeps up from the Channel. The track winding down the valley is an illusion, a goblin path that leads you straight into faerieland. One little girl, who wandered away, found herself alone and lost. Crying, she banged her head on a rock and the rock opened and faeries came out and gave her a golden ball, then dried her tears and led her home. There was much amazement in the village and one old conjuror, thinking of getting a golden ball himself, gathered some primroses and made his way to the rock. The hollow hill opened for him, but he was taken and kept by the faeries. Because it was not the right day, or the right number of primroses and he was not a dear little soul.

He also knew about the ‘witch rites’ on Cador’s Mump, where some of the local women danced skyclad at May Eve and Midsummer and that the flat rock on the approach track was called The Devil’s Stone. Then there was that poor fellow Lukins who had been possessed by demons these past sixteen years and was known as ‘The Demoniac’ by the locals. He had, of course, heard of Maria Stevens, who it was said that her trial at Taunton Castle in 1707 for bewitching Dorothy Reeves was one of the last in the county. She had escaped ‘Stonegallows’ which stood at the boundary of the parishes of Bishop’s Hull, Trull and Wilton. Richard Hunt, JP had personally led a zealous hunt for eight years as the county’s ‘witch finder’. There had been many witch trials throughout the county over the years, many were poor old women with a bad reputation, who were accused by their neighbours. Although the ‘Witchcraft Act of 1735’ had finally concluded prosecutions in England for alleged witchcraft. People in the villages were still very superstitious, he thought to himself.

He was not a firm beholder in such matters. But, liked to think he was more pragmatic in life and he liked to keep abreast of the times by reading ‘The Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette’, a four page broadsheet. He was also a keen amateur archaeologist and had been on digs at Cleeve Toot and Taps Combe Camp, both Iron Age Hillforts. Out wandering, he had also visited Wooks Cait, a standing stone that was recorded in 1730 by John Strachey as having a crack down the middle that almost splits it in two and The Water Stone which was the remains of a burial chamber with a hollow in it that collects rainwater. While he knew about the story behind Peak Wina, a cairn which stood close to The Hillfort and had been created by fishermen on their way to tend their nets by throwing a stone onto the cairn and wishing for a good catch. Stevens had witnessed them while out walking that way one day.

He had also drunk from the spring that arose in the Winter of 1763 / 1764 after a period of heavy rain opposite old Master Pigott’s house.and which ran through the field towards his residence. Gentry came from miles around to partake of the clear, cooling waters.

When he had visited St: Andrew’s Church at Congresbury, he was told the story about the remains of the ancient yew tree which stood in the churchyard and was known locally as ‘St: Congar’s Walking Stick’. Stevens had also listened to a story about a nearby 17th: Century farmhouse which, it was said, had two mummified cats in the roof to protect the house from fire. A ‘witches charm’.

All around him was quiet and still. Noticing that the birds had stopped singing.

Suddenly. . . . . .

He heard the rumbling of heavy wheels and the cantering of hooves behind him. On turning around with fear that he was about to be run over, he perceived a hearse-like coach drawn by four black horses with blood red glowing eyes. As the coach drew nearer, his astonishment turned to terror when he recognized that the driver lacked a head. The spectral vehicle suddenly vanished before his very eyes as he jumped out of the way, banging his head hard against a rock jutting from the ground.

The local parish priest, John Hibbertson, was also out walking in the same part of the glen, when he saw the squire in the distance, leap to one side of the track. Nothing was there? What made him jump so? Running to the others aid, he could see that his head was bloody and the poor wretched soul was jabbering something about a ‘Phantom Coach’ driven by a headless man trying to run him down. – The first to have encountered this apparition was a group of Romany Gypsies, camped overnight in the Combe. – Fear filled his eyes. Hibbertson could see that Stevens was terrified from his ordeal and provided means for removing him to his home at Chelvey Court,which had been built between 1618 and 1660 for the Tynte family, who were important in the surrounding area at the time. On the way, knowing that the squire was moneyed he thought up a plan to benefit from this act and was determined to get some of his money.

With that object in view the parish priest took into his confidence an old friend, whom he knew to be as unscrupulous as he was himself. The two rogues paid daily visits to the bedside of Stevens, where during the day he lay with apprehension and at night terror visited his dreams. They both exhibited the deepest concern at his injury and nursed him back to health. They completely deceived him and contrived through their artifices to obtain his signature to a will, drawn up by themselves. That they were his sole beneficiaries and thus cheated the squire’s family out of their inheritance. As soon as the squire had signed the will, Hibbertson promptly murdered him.

Neither Hibbertson nor his friend lived long to enjoy their ill-gotten wealth. . . . . .

It had been long rumoured that Hibbertson, although a parish priest, was in league with the devil and to practise black magic in the Combe at the dead of night. For when he died not long after the murder, a tall, shadowy figure, neither human nor animal, but a terrifying mixture of both, was seen to enter the Rectory – which was a modest building made from local brick and rubble with a Roman tiled roof, coped raised verges and had been recently built – in the village. Shrieks were heard coming from within the priest’s house and it was firmly believed that the Devil or one of his demons had come for his sin-laden soul. His ghost, clad in a long black cloak closely resembling the garment which he wore in his lifetime, was seen in the glen soon after his death and it is rumoured to have appeared there since. Observed, prowling along the old rutted track and shady paths, or stood at the base of one of the trees looking towards the old Manor House in the distance, with its ornate style, characterized by stone facades, a porch with a tympanum bearing the arms of John Tynte and flanked by bunches of fruit, pantiled roof with steep roof pitches, windows and large chimneys.

Chelvey Court

 

steep sides, bare above
where ash and fir
grip on stony ground,
grey boulders, among tufts of gorse
lie in wait to catch one’s foot
whilst gnarled oaks watch and grin,
walk on to the highway-man’s tree
for the little man
dressed in green,
awaits as guide
along the faerie path.

 

 

 

 

 

© Stewart Guy. 2022 & 2023

 

 

 

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Gandalf’s Garden

Posted on 1 April, 2023 by Editor

Gandalf’s Garden was a mystical community which flourished at the end of the 1960s as part of the London hippie/underground movement, running a shop and a magazine of the same name. It emphasised the mystical interests of the period, and advocated meditation in preference to drugs. Muz Murray was prominent and editor of the magazine (and is now a world-travelling Mantra Master).

The magazine ran for six issues, published in 1968 and 1969. Because of their rarity and the quality of the psychedelic artwork, copies of the issues were valuable collectors’ items; however the entire output of Gandalf’s Garden is now available to read online at the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/search?query=subject%3A%22gandalf%27s+garden%22

‘Gandalf’s Garden chronicled the flower-power scene of the 60’s London. The “mystical scene magazine” concentrated on the spiritual aspect of hippie life, and served to connect people in London and around the world who were looking for an alternative to the dreary and destructive realities of industrialization, war, or even the darker aspects of the “turned on” life.’

     – Clint Marsh, The Pamphleteer

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SAUSAGE 264

Posted on 1 April, 2023 by Colin Gibson

Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column which doesn’t appear to support anything, yet is Grade II listed

READER: Did you get a request to join my Linkedin network?
MYSELF: Yes, I did, along with a further 46,000 requests purporting to be from other people, but which are actually generated from Linkedin’s robot database. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer my pyramid schemes to have at least a pyramid.
READER: God you’re such a stick-in-the-mud! These days everybody who’s anybody is on Linkedin.
MYSELF: That’s all very well, but what’s it for?
READER: Eh? What’s it for? Linkedin? I should have thought that was obvious.
MYSELF: Well let’s assume it isn’t obvious, and tell me what it’s for.
READER: Er… Linkedin. It’s a sort of networking thingy isn’t it?
MYSELF: Go on……..
READER: it’s a place where…a place where you……where you can like…… network, with people of similar…..er….with like-minded people who are…erm…..people who would like to….er.
MYSELF: I rest my case. No further questions M’Lud.

DEAD COMEDIAN SURPRISE WIN
‘Professor’ Stanley Unwin, who died in 2002, has confounded polls by winning the Upper Dicker by-election representing The Breakfast Party.

Contacted by TV psychic duo Medium and Large, he issued this brief statement via Ouija board, outlining the radical direction of the new party:
“Politicky ofty communicatle like a flapperly fly-paper, all of a sticky fluttermost
over the early morny windlow”. he tapped out “We in the Breckermost Partly stand for deep joy in the wokely diversimost, a rainblow meltypotter of several smouldery sausages, proportional black puddle, toasty orange marmalady, a steamly mug of milky teapot – and unforgettabold – severalode crispymost rashers of the porkly pig.
But the egg, fried upper-over easily, is, in my deeplyest humblode opinion, the icicle on the cakehole. This chuckly egg, hen-laid all speckly cornpecking in the free rangerly, is truly the tastymost!
I humblemostly declare these worms to be the deep firmamost fundamold of the Breakfast Partly manifesterole.
www.stanleyunwin.com/audio.html

PADDING IT OUT
The MCC issued strong denials this week after it was revealed that the government’s Department of Sports and Recreation have been manipulating county cricket scores to, according to leaked whatsapp messages, “make the country seem more successful”. The scandal broke after fanatical cricket fan Jamset Ram Singh smelt a rat as he read a report in The Rangoon Courier on the one-day clash between Worcestershire and Surrey. The report claimed that during the morning session Worcestershire were all out for 6,857 runs, with Surrey’s leg spinner Gallstone(JK) taking 46 wickets.
After lunch, according to the paper, Surrey’s opening pair Sponge (M) and Cleethorpe (R), replied with a combined knock of 18,553 enabling skipper Wassi Mattur to confidently declare before tea, leaving Worcestershire an almost impossible task.
“Incredibly”, the report went on to say, “Worcestershire racked up 47,530 for 4, and won the game by two innings and 27 wickets”.
We attempted to contact directors of the MCC at Lords, but were informed that they were undertaking an official nap after hosting a dinner with bribery and corruption officials from the Indian Cricket Board and were unavailable for comment.

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FOODIE NEWS
Queues began forming before dawn in a bid to secure a table at Upper Dicker’s latest hipster restaurant Guilty, which opened last weekend opposite Herr Shirt the new German gentlemen’s outfitters in the High Street. There were so many beards at Guilty’s opening that flocks of nesting sparrows had to be beaten off with sticks. Exhausted kitchen staff told me the top orders were baby octopus arms in whale semen, dolphin beak tartare and orangutan tagine surprise.

DICTIONARY CORNER
Baby oil (n)  mild lubrication for curing squeaky infants
Wysiwyg (n)  quick-change toupée.
Hursuit (n) the outfit she wears at work

READER’S LETTERS
Opening my bulging mailbag, filled as it was with the usual incontinent rubbish, I chanced on a couple of enquiries I was able to shine some light on.

Mrs.Onya Byche of Cranbrook wrote:
Dear Mr. Guano, (or may I call you Bird?),
can you please settle an argument? My friend claims that paintings depicting the inhabitants of the Garden of Eden with navels are factually incorrect, since Adam and Eve were created by God without the use of a womb. As a confirmed atheist, I say that is palpable nonsense. Who is right? 

I replied:
Dear Mrs. Byche (no you may not),
I would be delighted to settle your argument. First of all God very definitely exists, otherwise we wouldn’t have Jehovah’s Witnesses. Regarding the depicted navels, they have nothing to do with umbilical cords, which in the case of Adam and Eve would be redundant since they were created by God using his special powers, which bypass rumpy-pumpy and birth. The fact is, if you look hard enough you will see that all paintings have belly buttons, which is what art gallery staff use to carry them about.

Mr. V. ‘Biff’ Smith of Hastings posed this question, one which has troubled many great thinkers throughout the millennia:
Dear sir or madam,
before the invention of the light bulb, what appeared above people’s heads when they had an idea?

I was happy to supply Mr Smith with the following information: 
Dear Biff,
before Mr. Edison patented the incandescent light bulb, the thing that hovered above people’s heads when they were struck with a brilliant idea was either a ball of wool with crossed knitting needles or a plate of mashed potatoes with sausages poking out and two fried eggs stuck to the sides.

 

 

 

 

 

Sausage Life!

Click image to connect. Alice’s Crazy Moon is an offbeat monthly podcast hosted by Alice Platt (BBC, Soho Radio) with the help of roaming reporter Bird Guano a.k.a Colin Gibson (Comic Strip Presents, Sausage Life). Each episode will centre around a different topic chosen by YOU the listener! The show is eclectic mix of music, facts about the artists and songs and a number of surrealistic and bizarre phone-ins and commercials from Bird Guano. Not forgetting everyones favourite poet, Big Pillow!

NB: IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PAID SUBSCRIPTION TO SPOTIFY, THE SONGS WILL BE OF RESTRICTED LENGTH

https://vimeo.com/user129836501https://vimeo.com/user129836501

 

https://vimeo.com/user129836501

 



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Vote For Countryside Alliance
by The Hunt Cult. Click for video
https://vimeo.com/501269086

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SPONSORED ADVERTISEMENT
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By Colin Gibson

 

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The Funny Thing About Summertime Searching

Posted on 1 April, 2023 by Kushal Poddar

One dark crow on the row
pecks at sunshine.
Stay out for long
in the summer months
you’ll see two heads
of the bird caws, “All
it takes is a sapling
to undo your concrete.”

And you have stayed in
the sun for long searching
for one door in these
rows, lanes and streets
ebbing back to the beginning.

 

 

 

 

Kushal Poddar
Picture Nick Victor

Kushal Poddar lives in Kolkata, India

@amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
 Author Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/ 
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

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Disbelief as ‘Green King’ Gives Royal Assent to New Gene Breeding Technology

Posted on 27 March, 2023 by Julian Rose

 

In one of the more shocking hypocrisies of this year so far, Charles 111, King of England – considered to be a strong supporter of organic farming and environmental causes – has given his Royal Assent to a biotechnology ‘innovation’ which will provide an open book for UK firms to alter the genome of animals and plants, so as to create novel engineered species and biotech ‘foods’.

In taking this step Charles has committed an open act of betrayal of all bona fide farmers, and particularly of organic farmers.

The Genetic Technology Precision Breeding Act 2023 was given the royal go ahead on 23rd March, 2023. *

This piece of legislation will, for the time being, be unique to the UK, as such animal and plant biotech deformations are not allowed in the EU and many other countries.

A secondary deception relates to the marketing of such novel recombinant DNA experiments.

The UK government has stated that no separate definition will be given to gene technology engineered products, therefore no special labelling will be required.

The dark irony of the King of England launching unlabelled biotech foods, animals and plants on citizens of his own country, is difficult to trump.

Charles is already in conflict with the constitution of his country by standing shoulder to shoulder with Klaus Schwab in promoting the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’. One of the main objectives of which is to render nation states obsolete and to centralise all power within the control of a small despotic elite, whose stated intention is to make all private property illegal and to re-engineer human beings into Transhuman cyborgs.

On May 6, 2023, at his coronation in London, Charles will be officially crowned monarch of the United Kingdom and its Commonwealth (colonies). A large empire.

As the centre piece of the coronation ceremony, Charles will swear ‘The Coronation Oath’, essentially pledging his allegiance to the people of Great Britain and to protecting the sovereignty of the country and its traditions.

If Charles does not break his relationship with the World Economic Forum before this point, he will be performing an act of treason. The implications of this are profound.

As yet, the British people have not woken-up to their fate. But should the truth emerge of this singularly blatant hypocrisy, the future of the British monarchy will be dark indeed.

The UK is officially recognised as a ‘constitutional monarchy’. With an unrevoked Common Law constitution stretching back to the Magna Carta of 1215, the true political power lies with the people and not with parliament. Something which has been largely hidden from public knowledge.

If there is to be a future king or queen, the country needs that person to exercise his/her rite to stand-up against the continual parliamentary usurpation of the people’s power.

The people need a monarch with some guts, some wisdom and a genuine respect for truth. Someone who will use his time-honoured constitutional powers to block anti-life legislation like The Genetic Technology Precision Breeding Act 2023; thus setting a proper precedent for Great Britain’s ‘first among equals’ to act like a real King.

*Please see this link for official UK government act. For short version scroll down to c.6, 2023 Chapter 6 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/6/pdfs/ukpga_20230006_en.pdf

 

Julian Rose

Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, a writer and international activist.
He is co-founder of The Hardwick Alliance for Real Ecology https://hardwickalliance.org/ and President of the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside. Julian is a strong defender of pro ecological and traditional small farmers and successfully led ‘The Campaign to Save Real Milk’ against two UK government’s attempts to ban it. To find out more and to learn about his books, visit www.julianrose.info

 

 

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TATOOS ARE FOREVER (BUT THEY GREEN AT THE END): MOTORCYCLE DISPLAY TEAM

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Andrew Darlington

 

They are not a real Motorcycle Display Team.

They are a three-piece Rock band whose current album

‘Wereman’ is well worth your attention…

 

The news for today is the downloads for tomorrow. Motorcycle Display Team is a band name to conjecture with. A power-trio in the classic bass-drums-lead-guitar wedge, abbreviated to ‘MDT’ by inner aficionados, they must have done an electric flex and curly wires deal with Mephistopheles in order to perfect the greatest moves you’ve never so far seen. Righteous rage. Agitational Propaganda. All The News That Fits. Formed in 2007, they consist of SE Londoner (Bletchley via Catford) vocalist-guitarist and sometime pianist Steve Hinds, his high voice rises into near-falsetto Manic Street Preacherism. Dubliner drummer Morgan Condon simultaneously blows your mind and knocks your socks off, while long-haired original-original New Zealander Matthew Eyre plays the bass that drives the album’s storming attack. ‘We were a four-piece when we started’ point out Steve, ‘but we’ve been a trio since then.’ Someone called the resulting sound ‘Arch Rock’… whatever that means. They don’t play faster than most, just further.

My very esteemed friend Chris Estey sent me a review copy of the three-piece’s most recent and very fine album – ‘Wereman’ (October 2022). It’s lyric-heavy with the sweat of live energies, words thorny with spiky quotable quotes. What is a Wereman? The beast on your back? Lon Chaney Jr, Oliver Reed, ‘Der Steppenwolf’, ‘Teen Wolf’… ‘An American Werewolf In London’? or a Werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand? Werecreatures, also called Therianthropes, Therians or Shape-Shifters are the mythical cursed humans who revert to the beast, as in the album’s digital spin-off single ‘The Chain Links’, which says ‘perish the thought you’d kill for sport! Bay at the quarry, slavering at the mouth…’ Or, as the band explain, it, it’s ‘a savage beast that only reveals its humanity once a month. An atavistic creature that plays an outsize role in our current social and political narrative.’ Yet also charming and mercurial. ‘This song uses the familiar patterns of an abusive personal relationship as a prism through which to view the ancient dynamic between an entitled elite, and the majority forever in tow,’ explains Steve Hinds. Shot in the Asylum Chapel in Peckham the video features two dancing priests.

But first track, opener ‘Hipshaker’ starts off like the theme-tune from a kid’s TV-programme, which merges into a long info-tutor sample advising on the goals of public speaking, to be cogent, audible and apropos. Before the deluge of sharp Punk guitars with structured loud-soft grunge. Yet there’s also a sunny day garden acoustic out-take demo of the song that reveals its impressive bone-hard structure.

There’s a dialogue concerning woman’s high-gloss fashion, and how stilettoes mean you can’t run away. It takes pussy-grabbing Trump and white racism into the existential crisis of pushback. ‘Let’s roll back years of this patriarchal bullshit,’ Steve yells, hard, but delivered with catchy harmonies and drop-in voices. There’s bass acceleration in dense guitars for ‘Scratch ‘n’ Sniff’, you really gotta scratch before you itch. Plans are for the hungry. Cut-&-paste another one today.

There’s film of the band sessions captured on the unique ‘Lightship 95’ recording studio moored on the Thames at Trinity Buoy Wharf, once a beacon on the treacherous seas around the Goodwin Sands, now superbly equipped to handle storming alt.Rock soundwaves. ‘I’m fuckin’ knackered’ says Morgan after the intense work-out, ‘right craic, really happy. But I’m fucking knackered.’ Among other questions the album poses there’s the one that concerns the track ‘Trying To Save The World With A Song’, there’s a songwriter who scrawls a crude hand on foolscap, is it about Bob Dylan…? I crave just a little enlightenment.

‘The song isn’t specifically about Bob Dylan…’ offers Morgan, the drummer, from behind an impressive percussion-barrier. ‘It’s more about certain people who think they can save a situation by carrying out an action that suits them. While they feel they’re changing something, they need to go further to see a real difference. But we definitely had certain musicians/Rock stars in mind when we wrote it. Bono might spring to mind. Hope that helps!’ The lyric probes motivations, ‘why? What are we writing for? Words on air. Actions win the war. ‘I try to stage an intervention, but all my clever words come out all wrong.’ What can a poor boy do, except to sing for a Rock ‘n’ Roll band?

There were two previous albums – ‘Captatio Benevolentiae’ (2012) and ‘Yours Probably’ (2018), plus a couple of EPs, and a sweetly melodic romantic 2018 mp3 single – ‘Darlin’ (ISI Media-4), a complete moment with a Christmas Eve message. Because, for a band, it’s always problematic writing about current specific issues when events are in a continual state of flux. Now that Trump and his shining wall have been hopefully relegated to history, although his divisive legacy remains as a corrosive force in the background of international politics. And wasn’t the ‘Big Society’ a David Cameron concept… how long ago that seems now, the epic sweep of history, ‘change may be the only thing you can rely on.’ More sonically nuanced, slow – into a build of stop-start detonations, a riff that ebbs away, full of growths and decays. ‘We came from shit, but you don’t have to dwell in it.’

‘Yes, we need a new government’ Morgan agrees.

But is a new Government enough? I like the band’s lyrical savaging of the Gig economy. Isn’t there more a need for some major redistribution of power within the economic structure? ‘Mexicans’ is about migrants out perchance to steal a glance at the pan-American dream. On the Lightship studio-film Steve gags in skewed accent ‘I have just been doing some guitars for the song ‘Mexicans’, and it’s really funky, in fact some of the guys in the control room said that if they had not had their hands over their ears they would literally have died from the funk.’ But take the rag away from your face, now’s the time for your tears, for this is also a song about the ‘Gig economy’ in general. The real walls are not the imaginary lines drawn on Google-maps, but those inside your head (with a fleeting drop-off at Robert A Heinlein SF to borrow the word ‘grok’).

‘Absolutely! the gaps are growing and growing. Who knows which party is capable of fixing it?, but clearly the Tories need to go now’ agrees Morgan, with a trace of Dublin in his accent. ‘Worker’s rights are fading away before us and no-one can afford a home, a simple basic right. People in the UK couldn’t afford heating this year… that’s criminal!’

I already like the way this dialogue is developing. The album’s first spin-off single – ‘Armchair Politician’, is carried on a graffiti video with Nadsat Droogs using glowsticks to replicate the ‘Clockwork Orange’ subway attack. I love the video’s Stanley Kubrick references, before it closes with the feral teens bursting in on the band rehearsals, and in the fight that ensues a cushion explodes into a snowstorm flurry of feathers. The world is embattled, as the couch potato ignores it all by escaping into bland soporific reality-TV as feathers drift around him. Using TV as Harlan Ellison perceptibly demonised it, as the Glass Teat. There’s a Brexit subtext, ‘don’t it feel shitty in this minority, to cut our noses off to spite our polity,’ cogent, audible and apropos, as the rhythm slows into a dub-wise break. Steve explains it as ‘this song laments the loss of common sense, decency and compassion amid the vicious, pernicious partisanship and eternal outrage at the heart of the public square.’

‘And great to see you noted the reference to ‘Clockwork Orange’,’ adds Morgan. Of course, it’s a classic movie that throws up lots of questions about totalitarianism, and the subversive elements of law and evil. ‘Fully agree. It’s one of my faves. One of the scary things in it is that two of the droogs end up as police officers. Not to mention the ‘U’-turn to make sure young Alex saves a bad press story at the end.’ Malcolm McDowell is a malevolent angel.

But then again, is the relentless gnawing drive and beats-per-minute ‘as they go and they go and they go’ track ‘Oi’ about getting off the old Punk ‘bandwagon’ that got its manifesto from Garry Bushell in the inky ‘Sounds’ music paper? ‘No, ‘Oi’ is a reaction to how some of the English football fans behaved after losing against Italy in the Euro finals a couple of years ago. It was disgusting how some people use football as a reason to act that way.’ It’s not OK.

Exactly. Check out the band’s cover of Led Zepp’s ‘Immigrant Song’ first, then check out their stylophone cover of Britney Spears ‘Toxic’ too!

I like the way this interview technique evolved as a kind of zigzag back-&-forth dialogue. Motorcycle Display Team is a band name to conjecture with. Do the band actually own motorcycles? Are the three of them any good at exhibition riding? Can they even perform wheelies? ‘The name comes from an in-joke’ offers Steve, ‘a really bad in-joke at the time, and it gets worse and worse with very telling of the story. Initially, when we got together, we considered a bunch of names – Little Sisters, X’s, Kisses, and for a while we were Sancho Panza, until deciding none of them were any good. The idea was – when Morgan plays the drums, he plays very heavily and loudly, and the kickdrum will quite often move around the stage, so we have to put something heavy in front of it, or sometimes we have to stand on that thing and play at the same time – almost like we’re hanging on in formation, like a Motorcycle Display Team! We liked the idea of that because it was stupid and naff and also kinda funny. Which fit us in a weird kind of way.’

‘No, none of us own motorcycles. However, we’d like to think we’re good at exhibiting ourselves!’ says Morgan, the drummer. Which is a great answer!

 

 

BY ANDREW DARLINGTON

 

2009 – ‘The Crayon Masterpiece’ (ISI Media-13)

First three titles with guitar and production input from Jack Elphick.

(1) ‘Firecracker’ (4:30), soft Buzzcocks acceleration, she’s a walking firecracker.

(2) ‘Worry Wings’ (3:39)

(3) ‘Aint’ (3:49)

(4) ‘Beneath The Flowerbed’ (4:13)

 

2012 – ‘Captatio Benevolentiae’ (ISA Media Ltd-1)

Produced, engineered and mixed by Cesar Gimeno Lavin

(1) ‘Breaktown’

(2) ‘Better Than Sex’

(3) ‘The Best Ex You Ever Had’

(4) ‘Summerbomb’

(5) ‘Zigfrid Pt.2’

(6) ‘The Arguers’

(7) ‘Betweenager’

(8) ‘Brickwall’

(9) ‘Cynics In Love’

(10) ‘A Taste’ issued as 2015 single distributed for radio and review

(11) ‘Ocean Eyes’

 

2015 – ‘Letters Of Last Resort’ EP (ISA Media-2)

(1) ‘Letters Of Last Resort’ (3:44)

(2) ‘All The Way To Rockaway’ (3:26)

(3) ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ (4:19)

(4) ‘Girl Monday’ (3:00)

(5) ‘Sleep Apnea’ (3:57)

 

February 2015 – ‘Girl Monday’ (3:01) promo single (ISA Media)
radio single taken from ‘Letters Of Last Resort’ EP

 

2018 – ‘Yours Probably’ (ISA Media-6)

Produced, engineered and mixed by Cesar Gimeno Lavin

(1) ‘Ice Age’ (7:06)

(2) ‘Resistance Is Fertile’ (3:18)

(3) ‘Indelible Ink’ (3:36)

(4) ‘Erosion’ (3:16), ‘a tiny little tragedy’, a nuanced track of some subtlety.

(5) ‘Brace Brace’ (3:41)

(6) ‘Oh Country, My Country’ (3:39)

(7) ‘A Lady Never Tells’ (3:53)

(8) ‘Testing Testing’ (3:40)

(9) ‘Ruby Slippers’ (4:39)

(10) ‘Yours Probably’ (8:37)

 

2018 – ‘Darlin’ (ISI Media-4) mp3 single

A sweetly melodic romantic moment with a Christmas Eve message

 

October 2022 – ‘Wereman’ (ISI Media-14)

With producer David Holmes adding bass and synth, and Tom Risley (trumpet)

(1) ‘Hipshaker’ (4:39) with Drew Thompson

(2) ‘Footsteps’ (2:47)

(3) ‘Shut Up And Take Your Medicine’ (3:46)

(4) ‘The Chain Links’ (3:58), 2022 digital single (ISA Media-16)

(5) ‘Scratch ‘n’ Sniff’ (5:30)

(6) ‘Oi’ (4:17)

(7) ‘Mexicans’ (4:03) with James Chapman

(8) ‘Armchair Politician’ (4:41) with Drew Thompson, 2022 digital single (ISA Media-15)

(9) ‘Divide: Rule’ (5:48) with Drew Thompson

(10) ‘Trying To Save The World With A Song’ (3:58) with Drew Thompson

 

With quotes from Nick Field interview https://www.phoenixfm.com/2022/09/26/curveballs-21st-september-2022-motorcycle-display-team/

https://www.facebook.com/mdtbandUK

https://linktr.ee/mdtband?fbclid=IwAR2k1pfENipkhsC4ANOMkvm0RTKn5ZEPjIwTQlYDfMeVxUBs5Mei4UwuJ7I

 

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Crepuscule With Nica

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Bernard Saint

Welcome to New York why don’t you
Set your watch and mind to Nica-time
Day begins all night and runs for days

Her be-bop Bentley beams zaddik transmission
She beats the lights and smiles outrunning Miles
So help yourself to scotch it’s in the teapot

Half-parked at the Five Spot she walks full-ballerina
The drummer’s nodding wafer cymbals sizzle
‘Wild’ ‘amazing’ ‘Nica’s here tonight’

Then back home there’s hi-fi for each room
Except the bathroom where the baby-grand
Legs attract as scratching-posts for cats

‘The Cats!’ ‘The Cat-house!’ ‘Filled with Cats!’
‘Some three-legged some too-cool two-legged Cats’
So Sarah said of Weehawken – when Garbo came to tea

While Mister Monk will put on Astrakhan
Hat and coat composing
Confident intensities inside selected silences

Or Mister Silver sleek and fresh of moonlight
On posting his jazz messengers abroad
Wide awake composing ‘Nica’s Dream’

Rabbi Ginsberg has this Grace to say
‘Contrary to the American Dream
Time is not Money – but Music’

As joyfulness returns to jazz
Where deconstructed blues street meets
Atonal spirituality

So welcome to the world why don’t you
Set your heart and soul to ‘Nica’s Tempo’ –
What is true in time is true forever

 

 

 

Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer

 

 

 

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BE A FIGHTER!

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Editor

 

I write

Not because I want to

But I have these words inside me.

That needs to come out.

 

The star looks so lonely up there

If it’s fair

It inspires so many

But never comes close to any.

At night we stare at each other

And I discover

Even it’s unfair

We can’t fight against the air.

The beautiful star afar

Loudly whispers to me

It’s enough to have your fair.

In order to shine brighter

Be a fighter!

 

And at the end

There it will happen

Something beyond physically

That never ends.

 

 

 

Monalisa Parida

 

Bio:- Monalisa Parida is a post graduate student of English literature from India, Odisha and a prolific poetess. She  is very active in social media platforms and her poems have also been translated into different  languages and publish in various e-journals.

She has got 100 international awards for writing poetry. Her poems have been publishing international e-journals “New York parrot”, “The Writers Club” (USA), “Suriyadoya literary  foundation”, “kabita Minar”, “Indian Periodical” (India) and “Offline Thinker “, “The Gorkha Times “ ( Nepal), “The Light House”(Portugal), “Bharatvision”(Romania), “International cultural forum for humanity and creativity”(Aleppo, Syria), “Atunispoetry.com”(Singapore) etc. And also published in various newspapers like “The Punjabi Writer Weekly(USA)”,  “News Kashmir (J&K, India)”, Republic of Sungurlu (Turkey)” etc.

One of  her poem published an American anthology named “The Literary Parrot Series-1 and  series-2 respectively (New York, USA)”. Her poems have been translated in various languages like Hindi, Bengali, Turkish, Persian, Romanian etc.  And she is the author of the book “Search For Serenity”, “My Favourite Grammar”, “Paradigm”, “Beyond Gorgeous”.

 

 

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Bippety and Boppety Talk About Industrial Action

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Editor

– I’m on strike.
– You don’t have a job.
– I have two jobs.
– What are they? Pray tell.
– I have to do the washing up and make the bed on alternate days.
– That sounds gruelling. What about the other alternate days?
– Nothing gets done.
– That’s the price of living alone.
– It’s the price of freedom.
– It’s the price of being a lazy slob.

 

 

Martin Stannard

 

 

 

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For the Duration

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Editor

Come window me
near dawn open
toward cool breeze

Do what you
must do perform
weather aloud

Just one more
moment before symphonic
music will prevail

For the duration
listen in admit
you are there

Be the oboe
be the tuba
become the bassoon

Buffoon and bark
nasality when prompted
decide out loud

Remind me remind
others you are
yourself exclusively lovingly

 

 

 

Sheila E Murphy

 

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Three Poems

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Editor


COUPLE

They are perfect
for each other

They are equally annoying

•

SATURDAY

What to do today?
What to do today?

What to do today?

What to do?

•

FROST

Frost today
like the icing
on a baby’s head

Crunching
when you walk on it

 

 

Eric Eric

 

 

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A Mercedes Benz Life Exists But You Will Never Live It

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Editor

Your call will be preceded by a 90 second recorded message directing you to a website you already know about costing you minutes that you do not have. It will be punctuated by assurances that it is important and will be answered by the first available agent. Cue the Muzak.

There will be no signal. In the information society you will wander blind and bump into people waving your dumbphone in the air like a torch trying to find your way out of a darkness that was not forecast by Carol Kirkwood. But she did look lovely in that floral print dress this morning superimposed over a picture of Scunthorpe sent in by Flixborough74. Och she was bonny.

The only terminal for miles will be out of order. Finding your balance in the global economy of the imagination will be impossible at this time. You will agonise about whether a coffee and pastry is necessary and worth the potential for embarrassment death when playing the game of tap roulette.

Your journey will be delayed or cancelled without warning or explanation. Your ticket will be valid on the next available train that either does not exist or is useless for your purposes. Using it with another operator will certainly result in a penalty fare and if you happen to be black may involve being pinned to the ground on the platform you have been marooned on by 5 British Transport Police officers.

Your ambulance is going to be too late to save you. The paramedics on board will have nightmares about you and everyone like you for the rest of their lives but that will be of no solace to your relatives. The Daily Mail will run headlines asking what has happened to our 999 service? to be read by people who have been voting to cut it for the last 50 years.

That cough you have might be Covid or any one of a dozen potentially fatal things that haunt your fitful sleep half an hour before the alarm. It might also most likely be just a cough. After you have been on hold for 45 minutes a clinician may be available to speak to you on the phone while you are at work later that afternoon. No, if you miss it they will not call again. It is not specified whether that person will be a doctor.

Despite yourself you will look longingly at the plush dun leather interior of the incongruous for your street Mercedes Benz S Class that stopped for you as you crossed the road to get to the chemist. You muse that its driver probably doesn’t wander around with a necessary sheaf of life history every day in the pocket of a nice jacket that was found in a hedge one night.

He smiled at you and it was like a glimpse of the sun through bare winter trees. If only he would just open the door and offer you a lift to somewhere else.

 

 

Barry Fentiman Hall

 

 

 

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Comparisons

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Editor

 

Photos tossed in a box, old black and white prints. A forest somewhere north of here, a figure by a stream, a lake at midday, faces too close to distinguish who is who and where. The edges curled. The surface glossy, matt, reduced to sepia if I turn over and over, massaging the details to reveal some fact, clue, necessity, identity. The old itself is old, worn on the edges. I won’t turn on the camera today. It sees too much, gathers information, repeats itself. I could shoot my own face, in the mirror, against the wall, in the garden. It wouldn’t show much more than you already see. Skin, eyes, lips, hair. An expression without focus, placing an image out there, in the shallow eddies before comprehension.

 

 

Andrea Moorhead

 

 

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WHERE STARS SCAR

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by David Erdos

 

On Zapo De Ray’s IN EVERY WEED A WOUND, IN EVERY CHORD A COSMOS

 

The hum of the spaceship slides in, staining the strange skies
Above us. Chords like thumbs pressing the controls of the craft
Become guide. A smear of synth taints the ominous glass
Looking at us, as CONATUS claims us, leaving no place or port

We can hide. The pattern ascends as eyes spark horizons.
The stars are sharp. The black bristles under Zapo De Ray’s influence.
We can hear a voice in this mix, as if words were paint, thin
And watered, and light, detail and shadow finally gained congruence.

There is also shape to this sound, as the wounded field yields
Weed flowers; for these are the scars of departure
Wrought from the path deep within. Which this music unlocks,
As if it were the soundtrack for soul spillage, or the companion

For what either dread or dream might begin. HEAVY D pins this down,
It’s insistence spears and sparks static. This is the craft itself elevating
And slicing now solid air. The siren of screams which are doused inside
It’s cold chorus, as if vessel itself and those charting its cosmic course

Destroy care. The sound swelters. It holds. A hand on the throat,
Soon mutating what it grips, as if Jodorowsky and Giger had got
To complete their own Dune. You can hear Baron Harkonen’s glare
As his particular victims suffer; as this piece provides us with Sci-Fi

Effect and death’s tune. The sustained chord is space containing
Within endless patterns. The drone and sound splinters are just part
Of the deal the dead make. The heaviness presses in; song as star,
Folded over: a black hole pulling patterns out of the light

For whose sake? Not God. Not us. And the extra-terrestrials won’t be telling.
OM AH HUM holds the answer as it is the language and code of those far.
Zapo De Ray sings for them, intoning at last this strange syntax; murmurs,
Dark mutters that seek to describe each shunned star.

This is the universe talking back when you speak your dreams to it.
This is the sheen and the shatter of the glass and the gas that fuels space.
The mantra long made by primordial forces; a zen beyond ken
And the common, transporting song spieling towards another realm,

And dark place, where light slices like steel and wildlife grows
As explosions. Colours ejaculate from buds blooded and the fallout
Is one where ash soothes. PIKHAL concludes this soundtrack
For the unrecognised past and far future. It has Villeneuve and Ridley

Scott in it, Vangelis, Shulze and a muscular Popol Vuh. As Zapo De Ray
Journeys on, planting his chaos course straight from Peckham,
Out to the reaches where nothing you’ve touched remains true.
The music powers you, and frightens too. Feel is forcing (you)

Out through dimensions where London and Earth itself are mere flecks
In some strange being’s eye, who has seen and endured our trespasses,
And who has sealed the wound we inflicted by imbibing the weed
To Star Trek – away from wars and Death-Stars, Chronicle and care,

Moons and madness. This is the sound of that travel,
as the Astronaut spirals now, into dark. This is the stream of air
Through his suit. This is the ravaged face felt through sonics.
This is sound as chrysalis caking the fallen flesh that fate marks.

 

                                            David Erdos 24/3/23     

 

https://zapoderay.bandcamp.com/album/in-every-weed-a-wound-in-every-chord-a-cosmos

 

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Britain’s New Messiah

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Editor

 

We built the perfect human because there was nothing else to be done, harvesting the best features as voted for by the same demographic who gave us Brexit and a million years of white boys with silver spoons. No one had read Frankenstein, or even watched the movies all the way through, but surely someone should have anticipated the sickening dissonance of small perfections stitched to an ill-matched frame; that voice like a talent show runner-up, over-emoting about properties with possibilities, signature dishes, and the hot bods of other contestants? But there was the patchwork Premier, in his mottled motley and slap-on grin, flopping his marotte from side to side as he chose between the war-torn hunger at the border and the cute border collie pup with mismatched eyes. The dog won every time, though the music became more intense and the pauses before announcements became longer   and     longer       , and to freshen up the format we voted for a name for this messiah that we’d made. There was never any challenge to Deathy McDeathface, and we laughed at the memes and catchphrases, bought the merchandise, and acquired regrettable tattoos on stag weekends in cities we didn’t bother to pronounce correctly. But somewhere in a bustling, sun-baked bar we’d lost our new blue passports, just as we’d lost our shame, our discernment, and our sense of perspective. What were these rags? Where were our own clothes? Why were we starving amongst these millions of imperfect humans? My phone jerks me awake with a TikTok clip of Deathy McDeathface, dancing like Jacko, with a white-gloved fist and a face that comes unravelled, and for three minutes we are all winners, we are all perfect, and there is nothing else to be done.

 

 

 

Oz Hardwick 
Picture Nick Victor

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Digital Nomads

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Editor

Recently, Alan Dearling was contacted by Ari Z Satlin, together with Santiago Nieto.

They wrote to me, saying that they have apparently formed a world-wide collective of musicians for “healing ourselves and others through music”. They deem their music as ‘psy-chill’. Certainly it is ambient, psychedelic-electronica. A playlist for the musical travellers who want to reach the centre of their brains, perhaps!

Based in New York in the United States. Within a very short time they’ve gained an impressive viewing figure for their first musical extravaganza of about 4,000, via the platform, ‘the Psychedelic Muse’.

https://www.facebook.com/genredefying/

Ari told me: “My original idea for Digital Nomads was to be a super electronica group not just a duet. And, an open door to producers and musicians to bring their talents to this vision. Only requirement is it has to be super quality. Either through collaboration or tracks being sent, or re-mixes.

So, in light of that thought; don’t be surprised when this tribe starts growing and releasing tracks.

Recently we’ve also been part of the mission to spread healing by teaming up with healers: Ecstatic Dance, Reiki and Massage therapists – whatever and whoever is in the business of healing people in any positive outlets. This mission has nothing to do with money or fame. Those things are nice but there’s been a calling higher than me to do this. Whether I’m imagining it or it’s actually happening only time will tell.”

Ari performs as ZMan8, whose music is featured in this compilation video-mix. Here’s a link to an interview with Ari for Pysybient.org. Lots of interesting references (and links) to psych-music and native American cultural influences, especially through his music in the ‘Rebirth of Red Cloud’: https://www.psybient.org/love/interview-zman8/?fbclid=IwAR0APwBsDrfaRTJXX3bnnZ5fDpE2SYXXCj2-Iu3FW49hw9P_w1kyb69U8Ao

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Meanwhile…

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Editor

In the school on the hill
While his classmates
Bow their heads in silent prayer
You Boy
Quite the bold buccaneer
In his swaggering hat,
Navigates forgotten seas
Where derelicts drift
Buoyed up on weed
Or he’s lashed to the wheel
As waves curving claws
Slash down from topmast
To keel
Or making safe anchorage
To hack-wade his way
Through some Midnight-forest
Brimming with decay:
While his classmates speculate
How many angels
Can dance on a pinhead,
You Boy imagines
The Good Thief’s eyes
Peeled out by a passing crow:
While his classmates
Conjugate causes
Of the French Revolution
You Boy
Sees De Sade unexpectedly freed
Blinking in the sudden daylight,
As The Bastille burns
And blades are sharpened,
As his classmates
Contemplate
Some corner of a foreign field
You Boy
Imagines a rat
Scurrying No-Man’s Land
That pauses to whisker a poppy
Before burrowing deep
Into bloated carrion
And as he and his classmates
Queue for their dinner
You Boy
Imagines himself
Fedora pulled low,
Stepping through the door
Of an almost deserted restaurant
As alone at a far table
Some fat guy eats veal.

You Boy takes a step
And unholsters his gun,
Takes a step
And brings it up level
Takes a step
And pulls the trigger.

That’s better! he thinks:

 

 

 

 

Kevin Patrick McCann

Pieter Bruegel the Elder
 The Good Shepherd Detail
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HAMMER&HOPE. A MAGAZINE OF BLACK POLITICS AND CULTURE

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Editor

ABOUT

Hammer & Hope is a new magazine of Black politics and culture. It is a project rooted in the power of solidarity, the spirit of struggle and the generative power of debate, all of which are vital parts of our movement toward freedom.

We are inspired by the courageous Black Communists in Alabama whose lives and struggles to organize against capitalism and white supremacist terror in the 1930s and 1940s are memorialized in Robin D. G. Kelley’s book “Hammer and Hoe,” from which we take our name.

We will envision collectively what a better future might look like and the strategies that could get us there. Such an undertaking compels us to deepen our knowledge of history, politics, culture and our own movements.

Our aim is to build a project whose politics and aesthetics reflects the electric spirit of the protesters who flooded the streets in 2020, a project that breathes life into the transformative ideas pointing us towards the world we deserve.

Come join us. We have a world to win.

Sign up at  https://hammerandhope.org/


Art by Joy Yamusangie

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Grieving Is A Flat Note

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Kushal Poddar

In slow motion, down sky, 
an aircraft glides by. Today 
I am a flat-earther, desire to retain 
the moisture of grief on my palm till 
evaporation do us part; 
my craft hits the horizon’s end. And rain

covers the facet. Vagueness of some memory
clears the one-year boundary. 
An unhinged man juggles a tune. 
We are one now. Sanity is insane 
as the air inbetween stirs when 
two strangers pass. 

 

 

 

 

Kushal Poddar
Picture Nick Victor

Kushal Poddar lives in Kolkata, India

@amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
 Author Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/ 
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

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Steam’s Groove – (episode 23)

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Editor

Steam Stock
 

Tracklist:
Willie Bobo and the Bo Gents – Broasted or Fried
Black Heat – Love the Life You Live
Sly Stone – Crossword Puzzle
Weldon Irvine – Sinbad
Don Blackman – Holding You, Loving You
Don Cherry – Brown Rice
Gene Harris – Love for Sale
Detroit Emeralds – You’re Getting a Little Too Smart
Funkadelic – Hit it and Quit it
Delegation – Oh Honey
Oneness of Juju – African Rhythms (live in Washington DC, 1975)
Jerry Butler – I’m Your Mechanical Man

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Climb every mountain

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Editor

On his way back from the bathroom Greg’s attention was caught by what sounded like someone mumbling to themselves. It was coming from downstairs. ‘I think there’s someone in the house,’ he whispered after waking his wife Lin. ‘I’m going to investigate.’ The stairs creaked as he descended but the murmuring continued without pause. He picked up a torch from the hall table and tiptoed toward the kitchen from where the noise seemed to be coming. ‘What about that oblong purple object still some distance away?’ Greg heard the voice say. He turned on the torch and shone it into the room. There was no one there. Then on the floor by the back door he spotted something he couldn’t quite make out. As he approached he realised it was a mole, lying on its side and seemingly injured. ‘The high-water mark became detached and grew increasingly philosophical,’ the creature muttered. Lin came down the hall and entered the kitchen. ‘Oh my god,’ she said. ‘How did that get in here?’ ‘Maybe the cat found it,’ Greg said. ‘Weird thing is it’s talking.’ Lin moved next to him and they both peered at the wounded creature. It trembled slightly when it spoke. ‘Alright, if you feel that way climb every mountain,’ it said. Lin sighed. ‘We’d better call the animal rescue people.’ ‘And tell them we have a talking mole?’ Greg said. ‘They’ll think we’re crazy, or practical jokers. It’s four in the morning.’ ‘I guess you’re right,’ Lin said. ‘What should we do?’ ‘Maybe we just put it outside, it’ll be better off there.’ ‘OK,’ Lin agreed. Greg fetched the dustpan and eased the injured mole into it with the brush while Lin unlocked the back door. ‘Hey, don’t despair, a coded offer just arrived in the docking area,’ the mole murmured as Greg deposited it gently on the lawn. ‘I hope it makes it,’ Lin said. ‘What do you think its chances are?’

 

 

 

Simon Collings
Picture Nick Victor

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The Anarchestra

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Editor

Strange Musical Instruments Never Seen Before

Anarchestra introduction:

Strange Musical Instruments Never Seen Before:

The Anarchestra is an orchestra of over two hundred unique musical instruments built (with a few exceptions) by Alex Ferris (1954-) an American musician, composer, and theorist, to explore alternative timbres, tunings, and methods of playing.

The Anarchestra is set up as an interactive art installation that the public gets to play. It can be tuned all to the same key making it hard to hit the wrong notes. You don’t have to be a good musician to play it.

Anarchestra music is available at Bandcamp (free when enough people pay, they only allow x-amount of free downloads per month): http://www.anarchestra.bandcamp.com

Documentary about Anarchestra including performances, interviews, and examinations of some of its instruments:

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Sunset Songs for Street Deviants

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Rupert Loydell

Deviation Street: High Times In Ladbroke Grove 1967-1975, Various Artists (3CD, Grapefruit)
Trouble On Big Beat Street, Pere Ubu (CD, Cherry Red)
Silberland volume 2, Various Artists (Bureau B)
From A to B – The Sony Years, New Music (4CD, Cherry Red)
Sundown, Eddie Chacon (LP Stones Throw Records/Bandcamp)
Songs of Surrender, U2 (4CD, Island)

Back in the day, West London bohemia caused an eruption of psychedelic musicians and bands to emerge; the compilation Deviation Street attempts to capture that era in all its acid-fried glory. Quintessence kick things off, setting the scene with their ‘Notting Hill Gate’ single, swiftly followed by Hawkwind Zoo, who would later drop the Zoo bit from their name and become more electronic than their track here suggests. Amongst more famous names such as Family, Bodast, Tomorrow, Pink Fairies, The Pretty Things, Third Ear Band and Edgar Brougton Band’s – playing their delirious and unsettling ‘Out Demons Out’ – there are a myriad unknowns and (sometimes thankfully) forgotten acts jamming, chanting and upsetting the neighbours. By 1975 we get the arrival of the 101’ers, Motorhead and The Deviants, along with an early demo of Roxy Music and the splinters of Hawkwind after the original line-up imploded. It’s glorious stuff, harking back to an era before record labels ruled the world and yuppies took over Notting Hill and Holland Park.

There’s a rebellious heart to Pere Ubu too, but they came out of industrial Cleveland rather than any hippy rebellion. David Thomas’ strange singing (think Captain Beefheart) and analogue synthesizers have always been central to their sound, and if the energy level has dropped since their early albums, the 17 new songs here on Trouble On Big Beat Street continue to use awkward sounds and textures, overlaid with singsong surrealism and burbling, shrieking keyboard sounds and guitar mannerisms hidden in the mix. The album was apparently constructed in the studio, as the band played the songs for the first time, since Thomas is convinced ‘that a song is best the first time it’s played. There is nothing that can go wrong or be inadequate. Repetition allows error to enter in.’ Whether this is true or not, the album has an edge throughout, from opener ‘Love is like Gravity’ to the closing ‘Goodnight’. En route it offers up delights such as ‘Moss Covered Boondoggie’, ‘Satan’s Hamster’ and ‘Worried Man Blues’. Easy listening it isn’t, but it’s intricate chugalong rhythms and structural looseness has continued to surprise and entrance since I first played it.

If you prefer your rhythms electronic and repetitive then I would point you towards Silberland volume 2: The Driving Sound of Kosmiche Music, the follow-up to the delightfully psychedelic collection that comprised volume 1. Here the rhythm is king, motoring along behind layers of groovy synthesizers, screaming guitars, noise machines and sequencers. I guess my only quibble would be that several of the tracks are edits by the record company, which have removed some of the lengthy trance-inducing developments much of this music featured. But despite my criticism the album offer’s up a smorgasbord of glorious electronica from the 1970s and 80s, motoring into the future at top speed.

If one wanted to be unkind, one might hold krautrockers, along with the likes of Roxy Music, responsible for bands such as A Flock of Seagulls, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and New Musik, the pop end new wave and new romanticism, which mostly comprised people with really dodgy haircuts and dress sense playing cheap synthesizers with one finger. New Musik had a few hit singles and managed to release three albums in their career, the final one of which was apparently one of the first electronic albums recorded with digital samplers and emulators. True or not (the bit about it being one of the first, I mean) it doesn’t sound that much different from the previous two, and neither do the odds and sods b-sides and versions/remixes on the fourth CD. Personally I don’t find much here very new, and it’s hard to imagine that Cherry Red are going to shift many copies of this box set.

It’s with some relief I turn to Eddie Chacon’s new album, Sundown, his second solo album since the glory days of Charles and Eddie. If you like immaculately produced ‘celestial soul music’, often stripped back to lush simplicity accentuating plaintive, warm, sometimes tentative vocals you’ll love this. It’s 35 minutes of musical sunshine, 8 songs of gentle groove. Favoruites so far are the final two tracks, ‘Same Old Song’ with its soaring flute, and ‘The Morning Sun’, a slow-pulsing burner, with brass threatening to go freefrom throughout. It’s not often something so accomplished and enchanting comes along, and one has to question why Chacon is not signed to a major and the recipient of critical and popular acclaim.

Meanwhile, U2 have decided to re-record 40 of their early songs in a mostly low key acoustic style. They actually sound like a bad pub version of themselves, with lots of crooned and semi-spoken vocals, along with strummed acoustic guitar. If at times over the years we’ve all shouted at them for being too bombastic and preachy, without it there’s not much left. Goodness knows what they are surrendering to, but it feels like a big self-indulgent mistake.

 

 

Rupert Loydell

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Magical Mystical Tour

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Rupert Loydell

Dark Room, Garry Fabian Miller (Bodleian)
Adore, Garry Fabian Miller (Arnolfini)
Last Evenings, Garry Fabian Miller, Oliver Coates & Alice Oswald (Filtow/The Letter Press)
Against Leaves, Alice Oswald & Garry Fabian Miller (The Letter Press)
for measuring blueness, Alice Oswald & Garry Fabian Miller (The Letter Press)

When I first got to know Garry Fabian Miller and his photographs, he was working with plant material, making direct images from the likes of leaves and seed pods, sometimes in grids, documenting individuality, contrasts, change and the passing of time. This had been preceded by a series of photographs of  Sea Horizons, which have since been written into histories of land art with the entire series exhibited and recontextualised.

This recontextualisation is not unusual. Miller originally discussed his art in terms of science and optics, but soon moved towards a spirituality, curating The Journey exhibition and conference in Lincoln, which engaged with ideas of site-specific art, pilgrimage, contemplation, and community (and because of some of those present health care and well-being). Sister Wendy Beckett was a speaker there, a charismatic one, although in the calm light of day her tendency to see (her) God in everything, a result of her prioritising interpretation over the image itself, was not a rational basis for art criticism.

There were vague, if somewhat naive,  discussions about somehow using the Church of England’s parish system as a basis for art, which came to nought (I don’t think Miller had realised the difference between the Quakers and the establishment C of E!), and a kerfuffle about a nude male statue in Lincoln Cathedral, but the weekend conference helped cement the relationship between Sister Wendy and Miller. One of the results of this was the book Honesty, which my press Stride published, containing five short texts by Sister Wendy and a sequence of images of the eponymous seed pods. When we designed it, Miller talked about it being a kind of prayer book.

I moved away from Devon during a time when MIller was having to rethink and change his practice, partly due to the fact that Cibachrome photographic paper was not going to be produced any more, but also because the ‘symbiosis between photography and photosynthesis’ had run its course. Miller gradually came to a realisation that he could work with light and colour itself in his darkroom, rather than with any kind of filter such as plant material, or the likes of the grids or cross shapes produced by the vertical and horizontal window frames which he had photographed during a residency at Petworth House. In Adore, Miller states that ‘Their crossings makes the centre of my world’, relating it to the idea of home, which is ‘The heart of the real, beyond which all becomes fragmented and falls apart.’ He also goes on to state that ‘This is not a symbol of doctrine, but the mark of a free spirit.’

In Dark Room, which is a beautiful hardback publication serving as both  monograph and autobiography, Miller states that he ‘wanted to do more with less’ and that he ‘was beginning to recognise limitless potential between time and exposure as the activator of pure colour.’ We are still in the realm of science here, if somewhat romantically described, but elsewhere we get more mystical statements, such as

   The image is only waiting for the chemistry. As soon as it receives
   the light it makes itself. If you stay in the back of the darkroom for a
   photographic exposure of, let’s say, six hours, the experience
   becomes a kind of meditation – a rite.

or the likes of

   Some days in the darkroom it feels as if an image is waiting
   on the outer margins of visibility […]

I’m not very good at this kind of talk, which also features in the smaller and also beautifully designed book Adore, published to accompany a major exhibition at Bristol’s Arnolfini Gallery. Statements of this type sidestep authorial and artistic responsibility, and befuddles what is actually going on, which is that Miller has constructed an image and chosen to make it. And, yes, sitting in a dark room for hours on end, whether photography is involved or not, can become a kind of meditation, but what has that got to do with the mechanics of photography or the images that result?

Miller has always lived a simple, ordered and organised life, spending time gardening, walking and reading as well as making art. His beautiful house on Dartmoor is a light-filled sanctuary and Miller has always taken time to think through and plan what he has done, wants to do next and how he will facilitate that. His studio contains not only a darkroom but a white space for looking at and considering the work he has produced.

Sometimes, however, it seems that this becomes overthinking. The Sea Horizons series do not strike me as particularly original or interesting. Many artists – myself included, not to mention Sean Scully and others – take these kind of photos as reference material, mostly regarding them as stripes of colour. I am not sure they relate to land art practices (Richard Long’s photos, for instance, are only to document his art , are not the art itself); they are certainly not as innovative as work such as Hiroshi Sugimoto’s night sea photographs.

In a similar way, many of Miller’s colour abstracts of the last few years seem simplistic, relying mostly on their large scale and surface sheen to bewitch and bedazzle the viewer. I have no problem with abstraction, but apart from the fact these aren’t paintings they seem to be exploring similar territory to, for example, early John Hoyland stained and poured  paintings, some of the less complex works by Helen Frankenthaler,  and Kenneth Noland’s geometric works. Or perhaps they could be considered as less sculptural images than James Turrell’s light works. For me the absence of human traces in Miller’s photographs is a problem: despite their vivid colours they are cold and lifeless.

All artists at times pause and wonder how the world around them is so much more complex, beautiful, colourful and interesting than their own work, but all too often with MIller’s later art I can’t help but consider then in relation to images from space – solar flares, or Hubble telescope images – and feel that Miller’s work is too simple. Or perhaps I have simply lost my sense of wonder, something which Miller has in abundance, about the world around him, but also about colour and technical possibilities. The floating red square which floats against pink, ‘The Blossom Room’, is hard to reconcile with the statement Miller places opposite:

   The pink blossom
   is now here,
   its beauty to be seen
   or imagined.

The photo neither depicts or evokes the complex colours and movement of blossom; there is little to look at or actually see.

Miller is now exploring the use of natural dyes, which has also led him towards collaborations with textile artists and rugmakers. The resulting hangings simply do not have the luminosity of Miller’s photographs, and I am not convinced that reframing images through craft techniques is the right way to go. Instead, the works seem part of Miller’s wish to leave a legacy, to reframe and recontextualise his work, to turn it into a series of narratives about landscape, the self, a vague mystical spirituality (be that Christianity, Don Cupitt’s ‘Solar Theology’ or simply ‘light’ and inspiration) and a narrative of one artist reconsidering his art and practice as he carefully used up his remaining stock of a photographic paper which is no longer produced. The Adore publication is very similar to Dark Room in this respect, and although it brings some different contextual material and concepts into focus, both books take a similar approach and repeat many images and ideas.

Miller is articulate and engaging: his lectures for the Bodleian Library have been intriguing and informed as he tells the story of his life and art, but – and he is not alone in this – he less and less discusses the formal properties of his art works, instead surrounding it with allusions, quotations and collaborations, which sometimes distract and undercut as much as contextualise, inform or complement.

Having said that, the three Letter Press pamphlets are beautifully designed publications, which include poems by Alice Oswald rather than Miller’s own writing, along with carefully reproduced photographic images, including – in Last Evenings – stills from a film by Miller, which includes music by Oliver Coates. Book jackets unfold to become posters, text fades in and out, colours sing, cards  unfold into concertinas. I confess I prefer the work presented this way: short poetry, small selections of images, a size I can engage with without feeling bullied or persuaded by the overwhelming scale of many of the originals.

Apart from the images of Honesty, my favourite Miller photograph remains ‘With Its Own Light’, a leaf turned into a flame, a reproduction of which prefaces Dark Room. It, or a very similar image, was placed in one of Lincoln Cathedral’s chapels during The Journey, and its small intensity, its focused colour, lit up the space. For the moment, Miller’s current work does not have this effect on me: I am rebuffed rather than seduced, and Miller’s suggestion that he is an ‘unlikely carrier’ of ‘the residue of English Romanticism’ does not help, any more than the claim that ‘photography is a direct extension of the human imagination’, or that it ‘allows the projection of an inner vision – a mirror of thought and dreams’. For me this falls into the trap Surrealism, mysticism and new age beliefs fall into: thinking that the ‘inner world’ is intrinsically more interesting than what is around us. It isn’t.

 

 

Rupert Loydell

The Letter Press: https://www.theletterpress.org/shop/

A film about the collaboration between Garry Fabian Miller and Dovecot Tapestry Studio: https://vimeo.com/191490217

Arnolfini details about Garry Fabian Miller, including videos of his Bodleian Library lecture series ‘The Light Gatherers’, and the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘The Last Exposure’: https://arnolfini.org.uk/artists/garryfabianmiller/

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Poems of war, peace, women, power

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Editor

Poet Suheir Hammad “blends the stories and sounds of her Palestinian-American heritage with the vibrant language of Brooklyn”. Performing at TEDWomen in Washington DC, Hammad addressed the crowd of “confused, aspiring pacifists” and spoke of how poetry prepares you to confront “man’s creative violence” in her poems “What I Will” and “break (clustered).”

What I Will

I will not
dance to your war
drum. I will
not lend my soul nor
my bones to your war
drum. I will
not dance to your
beating. I know that beat.
It is lifeless. I know
intimately that skin
you are hitting. It
was alive once
hunted stolen
stretched. I will
not dance to your drummed
up war. I will not pop
spin beak for you. I
will not hate for you or
even hate you. I will
not kill for you. Especially
I will not die
for you. I will not mourn
the dead with murder nor
suicide. I will not side
with you nor dance to bombs
because everyone else is
dancing. Everyone can be
wrong. Life is a right not
collateral or casual. I
will not forget where
I come from. I
will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved
near and our chanting
will be dancing. Our
humming will be drumming. I
will not be played. I
will not lend my name
nor my rhythm to your
beat. I will dance
and resist and dance and
persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than
death. Your war drum ain’t
louder than this breath.

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SAUSAGE 263

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Colin Gibson

Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column which, when the light hits it in a certain way, looks a bit like Johnny Depp

READER: What did you make of the Boris Johnson grilling by the parliamentary special committee?
MYSELF: I’m not at liberty to say. I was in Lourdes at the time judging a miracle contest.
READER: I heard about that. Did the blind boy who can walk on water win in the end?
MYSELF: Yes, predictably. Personally I much preferred the woman who bled milk out of her eyelids and cured tonsillitis

PLEASE EAR MY PLEA
The race towards total imbecility is apparently unstoppable. Words which were once perfectly serviceable as nouns are now routinely mauled into verbs, (and vice versa) by people with no discernable grammatical sense whatever. You know who I’m talking about – actors, broadcasters, politicians, tragic wannabe reality stars and semi-vegetative talent-show judges, all role models for the unfortunate young. I pity our poor children, condemned to tread this linguistic minefield of gobshitery, who will grow up ‘birthing’, ‘transitioning’ and God forbid, ‘decisioning’, as their beautiful language crashes to the ground and bursts into flames. I have sent a copy of this poem to all secondary schools in the vain hope we can stem the tide before it’s too late. 

To Be or Not To Be, That is the Ask

When I cut with my scalpel
I make an incision
When I make up my mind I’ll have made a decision
When I’m being precise
Then I speak with precision
So do me a favour and please don’t transition.

READER: Lol!
MYSELF: What are you laughtering at?
READER: I was just thoughting……
MYSELF: Well obstruction it.

BOOK REVIEWS
Potatoes of Bolivia 1900-1945, (Mauricio Fondo, Cabeza & Calabaza $15.99)
Holiday reading at its blockbusting best…….Fondo’s tight plotting and gritty characterization, combined with his signature surrealistic approach to geography have delivered a hard hitting neo-realistic sure-fire best-seller. The story revolves around two distant cousins, Tetera and Maceta, who, after a chance meeting with Marcello Stromboli the capo dei capo of the Andalucian Mafia in a La Paz karaoke bar, find themselves hopelessly entangled in the murky world of condemned meat. Set in a gated community of Norwegian trawlermen in Lake Titicaca, centre of Bolivia’s crime-infested potato industry, Calabaza’s often torrid prose has been favourably compared to the novels of Dame Barbara Cartland.

Boris Through the Looking Glass (Carroll Lewis, Drinkme Press, 10/6d)
In Lewis’s extraordinary new novel we are introduced to a topsy-turvy world peopled with imaginary creatures, where the voracity of facts is tested to its limits. Truth is elastic, and able to swerve in whichever direction the recipient prefers. Facts and figures waft around like confetti, and the inhabitants quibble constantly about whether things are truths, half-truths, or not true at all, based entirely on what they do or don’t know. Perfect for reading in the burns unit after you’ve overdone it on the sunbed.
WARNING: Unsuitable for children, or suitable for children, depending on who did or did not recommend it.

POETRY NOW
Patrick Carabine’s latest collection Alien Breeze is out now. Here’s a preview.

THE PC CONSPIRACY
By Patrick Carabine

In the lexical swamp of today
There are things which
we can’t do or say
Like “I feel a bit queer.”
have some fags with our beer
or cavort like a bachelor gay.

In this difficult literary era
we don’t know if we’re
Victor or Vera,
The N-word the C-word
the wedlock-free B word
are all in the ear of the hearer.

It’s the P word
The S word
The educated guess word
The vaguely more-or-less word
That gets you in a mess.

Alive words dead words
ignorantly said words
fatally unread words
all-too-quickly spread words.

Each ill-considered mutter’s
drawn directly, like the rain
through the gutter of confusion,
swallowed swiftly by the drain,
there to disappear like hieroglyphs
forever unexplained

Are we too afraid to utter,
hid behind sardonic shutters,
not your fake-phonemic margarine
but proper English Butter? 

 

WARRIORS MANAGER CALLS IT UN GIORNO
Tributes pour in for Italian soccer supremo
Sergio ‘The Horse’ Peccadillo, footballing legend and manager of Hastings & St Leonards Warriors FC for over twelve months, will announce his retirement after their final home game of the season against Cockmarlin Thunderbolts, which will, sadly, also mark the Warriors’ relegation to the Nuclear Waste Disposal Solutions League (South) after only one season in the top flight.
After calls from some quarters for his removal following a litany of heavy defeats (including this season’s ignominious 8-0 exit from the first round of the Wendy’s Nail-Bar & Escort Agency Cup to arch-rivals Herstmonceaux Cannibals), the self-proclaimed Italian Stallion has finally decided to hang up his gold Rolex, Armani suit and Gucci loafers. Often mocked for his tenuous grasp of English, Sergio will nevertheless be remembered for his tactical genius. “I’ll never forget the boss’s first training session,” mused midfield enforcer Nobby Balaclava, “he gave us all a bowl of fettuccini and a glass of wine and took us out gambling. Afterwards, we all went to a pole dancing club in Cockmarlin where Welsh wizard Craig Cattermole famously got a three-match ban for simulation. True, we lost our first three games 8-0 under Sergio, but he soon settled in, and by mid-season our defeat average was down to respectable 4-0”.
As former Warriors’ goalkeeper Tim Smegma recalls: “Sergio was a breath of fresh air, particularly after the club’s previous disastrous appointments, like Spanish chorizo millionaire José Pypebahn, who’s sausage-based philosophy famously condemned the club to the lowly Hobson’s Denture Fixative League (south) for two seasons, or Gus Toylet (pronounced Toylay), who was sacked after only one game for match-fixing, money laundering and running an unlicensed escort agency.”
“Above all”, added Dutch groin-kick specialist Ruud van Smoot, “Mr. Peccadillo was a gentleman. I think this is perfectly illustrated by these inspirational words which he whispered into the ear of each and every one of the lads on match day as they filed out of the dressing room at kick-off time: “May I borrow your bicycle? My refrigerator is out of order”.

 

 

Sausage Life!

Click image to connect. Alice’s Crazy Moon is an offbeat monthly podcast hosted by Alice Platt (BBC, Soho Radio) with the help of roaming reporter Bird Guano a.k.a Colin Gibson (Comic Strip Presents, Sausage Life). Each episode will centre around a different topic chosen by YOU the listener! The show is eclectic mix of music, facts about the artists and songs and a number of surrealistic and bizarre phone-ins and commercials from Bird Guano. Not forgetting everyones favourite poet, Big Pillow!

NB: IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PAID SUBSCRIPTION TO SPOTIFY, THE SONGS WILL BE OF RESTRICTED LENGTH

https://vimeo.com/user129836501https://vimeo.com/user129836501

 

https://vimeo.com/user129836501

 



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https://birdguano2.bandcamp.com/album/sonic-goblin

Vote For Countryside Alliance
by The Hunt Cult. Click for video
https://vimeo.com/501269086

 

 

 

 

 

 

SPONSORED ADVERTISEMENT
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By Colin Gibson

 

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Au Revoir Adelaide Fringe until 2024

Posted on 25 March, 2023 by Editor

 

A final word about our visit to the Adelaide Fringe Festival.  The visit was cut slightly short due to our flight delays and cancellations, landing us three days late. However, here are a few more reviews, and a general summary. First, a review of a show which played at the hidden gem of a theatre – Warehouse Theatre – slightly off the main fringe hub, but well worth discovering and well worth a visit as the theatre does play all year round.

(Kevin Short)

 

MAYBE LATER

Presented by: Commedia dell’ongblack

Directed by: Tess Branchflower & Declan Carter

The Warehouse Theatre, 8 Unley Road SA 5061

Stories about people addicted to their cellphones have become a bit of a cliché. However, playwright Tess Branchflower attempts to put a new twist on the relationship between human and device with Maybe…Later. Adriana Pannuzzo assumes the role of the procrastinator, with Alex Warby as her digital enabler. The show shines a light on how an electronic device can overtake one’s life to the extreme that productive living outside the “cell” ceases to exist. The creativity in this piece lies with the decision to give the cellphone a human form. Would people make derogatory remarks on social media if they had to make them directly to someone’s face? Maybe…Later is a thoughtful piece of writing that hopefully provokes audiences to question their relationship with their devices, so they can start living in the here and now.  Congratulations to this Melbourne-based troupe for shining this warning inspirational light.

(Reviewer Kathryn S Kraus Edited by Kevin Short)

 

 

This year, the iconic Popeye 1 Cruise Boat became a floating artwork in celebration of philanthropist James Ramsay’s birth, and I was privileged to perform on this new incarnation. It would be remiss not to praise the Popeye team for all they achieved over the festival period and, indeed, continue to do so throughout the year. The festival Dream Boat cruise is a fringe mainstay. Presented by Endless Grooves, this is a must for young music lovers who like to move and groove as the boat cruises along the River Torrens. More sedate cruises, include the High Tea Cruise (which I attended) that provides the best in cream teas, champers, fancy cakes and sandwiches, and what you can’t eat you can take home. Then, one I failed to attend only because it is not my favorite drink is the Gin Cruise which allows you to experience Kangaroo Island by sampling their range of special gins. All in all, Popeye Cruise Boats are a must for any visitors to Adelaide.  Read all about them here:

https://thepopeye.com.au/

(Reviewer Kevin Short)

 

FINAL SUMMARY

Apart from all the eclectic and diverse range of shows and venues at the Adelaide Fringe, there was also a wonderful array of Street Performers (Basketball Man – also doing his own show – Ballet Busker,  FlowLaiYee circus performer from Hong Kong, to name a few) and they helped keep the festival spirit alive as we walked along the malls. So good that the Festival credited these 68 hard-working street professionals who came from all parts of the globe. I can’t praise the Fringe team enough for providing and coordinating a Festival worthy of global recognition, and I’m sure it will go from strength to strength in the years to come. Thank you to all, and here’s to the next time.  Bravo Adelaide Fringe!

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Degrees of Separation

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor

 

Roger White
Published by Leaf By Leaf isbn 978-1-78864-940-7


Some thoughts on this new book offered up by Alan Dearling

‘Fascinating, insightful, life-affirming and informative.’ Some of my thoughts as I read my way through this ‘novel’, which is set in England, Scotland, China, Germany, Denmark, and France with excursions into other parts of Europe and beyond. There are two time frames, the first set around 1942 through to the culmination of the Second World War. And secondly, modern China and London 2019-2020, as the Covid pandemic started to unfold and ravage the world in a very different kind of ‘war’.

For Roger this is a first-time novel. It is a major undertaking. He’s written educational books and reports, but this book is essentially a rich-mix of his own life/family experiences, much research into the relatively unknown war between Japan and China, and the RAF’s and American involvement in supporting the Chinese war efforts. Roger has attended creative writing courses relatively late in his life and has used personal, family ‘tales’ and experiences, putting them through a fictional blender. It’s quite some task, adding in detail from fighter pilot training regimes in the UK and China; bombing raids; night-time sorties; German interrogations; the French and Danish resistance movements; incarceration in Dachau; international Chinese relations in war-time and in modern times. There’s much more too, including the many facets of falling in love, devotion, and a wealth of fascinating detail about Chinese medicine and philosophies.

“Study the past if you would to define the future.”

Kong Zi (Confucius)

‘Degrees of Separation’ provides the fabric for a clever inter-twining of the lives of individuals, families, cultures that cross geographical, social and cultural divides. It’s never two-dimensional – the characters are ‘warts and all’. Lovers come and lovers go. Friendships seem to outlive relationships. The spider’s web of lives are spun effectively by Roger White to engage the reader into lesser-known places, time periods and historical events such as the often murderous Chinese power struggle between Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Tse Tung.

I really don’t want to detail the ‘characters’ in the book or the ‘plot’ as it interweaves together people and places across generations. Suffice it to say, that Roger keeps his foot on the gas, we want to read more, and find out how the jigsaw pieces from 80 years Chinese and UK are conjoined.

Whilst I read the book and considered the experience afterwards. The strengths  of ‘Degrees of Separation’ and its possible weaknesses are the same. We are confronted by wealth of detail, data, historical incidents and considerable dialogue in Mandarin, German, Danish and Second World War Limey and Yankee’ slang’. Occasionally it feels that the Chinese and the Brits are painted a bit too clearly as the ‘good guys’ contrasted with the Japanese and the Germans. But, that would have been as many people would have perceived it in WW2. Wars of the Righteous pitted against Evil. Sometimes it is just a bit clunky. But, it perhaps adds to the authenticity of the book.

All in all, a very different opportunity to glimpse into little known history and a charming love story too, frequently buried in the historical consequences of hatred, brutality and bravery.

 

 

 

 

Alan Dearling.

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REAL DREAMS!

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor

 

All may appear as one happy nation,
But everywhere exists discrimination.
Everyone has a different mentality,
They do wrong and blame democracy.
People who have power
commit sin,
Alas! It’s ugly truth of our country
Where we live!

They want to
Make it London,
Turn it into Paris,
Mould it in New York.
Only to enhance the glamour.

The people
Who doesn’t even have two square meals!
Who doesn’t have a shelter!
Oh’ Powerful! We don’t want that camouflage.

We really like
What we are,
To be the Indians,
And be in India.
We don’t need any London, Paris or New York.
So please don’t enforce your ambitions on us.

We just want
A full meal for everyone,
A roof on our head,
A security for our family.

 

 

Monalisa Parida

 

 

 

Bio:- Monalisa Parida is a post graduate student of English literature from India, Odisha and a prolific poetess. She  is very active in social media platforms and her poems have also been translated into different  languages and publish in various e-journals.

She has got 100 international awards for writing poetry. Her poems have been publishing international e-journals “New York parrot”, “The Writers Club” (USA), “Suriyadoya literary  foundation”, “kabita Minar”, “Indian Periodical” (India) and “Offline Thinker “, “The Gorkha Times “ ( Nepal), “The Light House”(Portugal), “Bharatvision”(Romania), “International cultural forum for humanity and creativity”(Aleppo, Syria), “Atunispoetry.com”(Singapore) etc. And also published in various newspapers like “The Punjabi Writer Weekly(USA)”,  “News Kashmir (J&K, India)”, Republic of Sungurlu (Turkey)” etc.

One of  her poem published an American anthology named “The Literary Parrot Series-1 and  series-2 respectively (New York, USA)”. Her poems have been translated in various languages like Hindi, Bengali, Turkish, Persian, Romanian etc.  And she is the author of the book “Search For Serenity”, “My Favourite Grammar”, “Paradigm”, “Beyond Gorgeous”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Dining Out on Dodgy Narratives

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor


 

Never chew what can be swallowed-
my suggested strap-line
for governments who
will happily feed you mussels, clams
& oysters with your television.
So long as you get the point-
Stop talking to each other.
Your government’s got you covered.
Don’t worry & certainly never think.
Shall I leave my brain to science –
take heed of administrators not scholars?
Will I take the tyrants’ hand if they say
it’s good for my health? But wait –
I am neither Judas, Pharisee nor coward.
Not far from the surface of this quake
rests loving anarchy. I shall make my
stand with the prophets
radicals who say – you cannot buy
what you can never comprehend.

 

 


Copyright Simon Heathcote
Photo Thomas John

 

 

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Beaux Gris Gris & The Apocalypse: Watching the World Fall Down

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Andrew Darlington

 

Whatever kind of ‘Apocalypse’ you anticipate happening,
an environmental meltdown, a social-economic collapse,
a Zombie Apocalypse,  make no mistake about it, 2023 is
time for a band called Beaux Gris Gris & The Apocalypse …

Beaux Gris Gris & The Apocalypse are a band who put the fun in funk, and the boom-boom in the boogie-woogie.

For their album ‘Good Times End Times’ (2022, Grow Vision GVBGG102) every picture tells not only a story, but a complete anthology. From the manic David Harris cover-art of flower-heads and snake-chairs separated by a river of screaming skulls, it’s a jukebox movie of an album. ‘Fill Me Up’ is done as a straight band studio performance, for all thrill-hungry humanoids. With dirty thumping smack-in-the-face rhythms, driving slaps and four-to-the-floor flop-house boogie piano. If Greta Valenti is the right hand, Robin Davey is the left hand. And it adds up to Ten – with a bullet!

Spin-off single ‘Watching The World Fall Down’ has all the push and speed of Indie energies, perfect Punk-Pop song-construction, with an inspired video thought-stream of hovering UFOs, satellites, a nice bra, pale blue hair, marching troops, protesters with placards that go ‘PEACE’, ‘GOD’, ‘LOVE’, ‘FIGHT’, ‘KILL’, a black-&-white sweet divine insert that resembles Veronica Lake, plummeting aircraft, then nukes fall and detonate, until it all ends with the perfect stillness of a nebula. Greta’s expression betrays her touch of humour, she’s ‘drinking magic, like old times.’ Because she’s the one who winds the key to the band’s motor as its carnival Carousel merry-go-round spins faster and faster. There’s a circuit-frying message on her cellphone screen bringing her ‘face to face with the human race’… ‘don’t leave me hanging on the end of this line’ she protests, like the ghost of an old Debbie Harry hit single. I love the ‘Watching The World Fall Down’ video, but where the hell do they start conjuring up visions as powerful as this? How do they set about storyboarding it? And where do the UFOs come from?

From its Classic Rock play-in, the track ‘Gris Gris’ itself is a boogie, with robots and animatronic creatures, urging ‘raise your glass, take a pill, it’s time for the apocalypse, roll it up, take a hit’… with Alex Jefferis on trumpet and Patrick Leith’s tenor sax, while Stephen stays locked in the toilet. But when she sings ‘everybody want a little gris-gris’ it’s impossible not to join in. They play electricity that bites your ears off. I haven’t stopped dancing yet. Once heard, always preferred.

Beaux Gris Gris & The Apocalypse is the musical creation of Greta Valenti with Robin Davey, although each band member plays a prominent part, everyone solos, no-one’s allowed to nod out. Hello Greta, Hello Robin. Robin had previously spent time as an artist on Atlantic and Interscope Records, where he recorded with a spectrum of artists running from Mick Jagger to Katy Perry. While Louisiana-born-and-bred guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Greta sings like she’s on fire, over steam-train drumming. Having already established themselves as performers and musicians in their own right, the two met when their respective bands crossed paths on YouTube. Their first Rock venture together, Well-Hung Heart, toured the USA opening for the likes of Fitz & The Tantrums, Twenty-One Pilots, Foreigner, and Offspring. The Well-Hung Heart albums ‘Young Enough To Know It All’ (2013) and ‘Go Forth And Multiply’ (2014) laid groundwork for what followed.

When I was staying over in New Orleans I was intoxicated that on every street-corner and in every Bar there were incredible musicians. In the UK there are players who study the albums and learn the techniques and are pretty good, but on Bourbon Street the fluency just seems so natural, so ‘in the blood’, that it flows as sweet as black syrup. As though this music is ingrained in the culture. Is that the way they see it? ‘Growing up in Louisiana there’s a lot of different types of music and cultures, all in one melting pot, and you just grow up with it’ explains Greta. ‘It’s just part of the soundtrack of your life, y’know. It’s just part of the fun of growing up there, but you also grow up with Jazz – Louis Armstrong and Doctor John and the Meters, you grow up with Country, you grow up with Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop is huge in the South.’ Which British musicians are capable of achieving that ‘sound’? The Rolling Stones around their ‘Sticky Fingers’ album period? Or more recent, current artists?

But Greta has her own agenda, ‘growing up in this world, and especially in the south of the United States, I’ve faced constant barriers based on my gender, how I look, etc. And that has been no different in the music industry. I don’t behave like some would prefer a woman to behave. I don’t see my gender or my physical being as some others do. As I get older, I’m sure some will think my age is another potential barrier, but I/we are making our own path. These prejudices – and the many other around race, sexuality, etc, go deep, as they are ingrained in our societies, and to be honest I’ve never understood why some people fall prey to such baloney. These prejudices only exist out of fear and to turn us against each other.’

Personally, I’d have considered that kind of anti-female prejudice was long since dead, with so many powerful gender-diverse activist artists working within music. Do people still think in that old weary stereotyped way…? Maybe in some backwards areas they still do? ‘Uh yes’ says Greta. ‘Not more than a couple years ago a booker in Hartlepool said they don’t book women as headliners. Racism, sexism, and the like is still alive and well. Less than before, but it’s systematic. The system is set and has to be broken.’

Most people would associate ‘Gris Gris’ with the 1968 Mac Rebennack ‘Dr John’ album. Does it have any other meaning or significance that I’m not aware of…? ‘When we started this band, I’d already become very familiar with the music industry’ she resumes. ‘So I wanted a masculine name to play with the gender barriers and also something that spoke of my family’s deep history in the south as my diverse pool of French/Arcadian white and black relatives have been there since pre-Louisiana purchase days. Had I been born male, my name would have been Beaux Gregory. Which is also a fish in the Gulf of Mexico! Beaux Gregory also directly translates to Beaux Gris Gris (or Beautiful Grey Grey). Gris Gris itself – where Dr John got it from, is a voodoo protection amulet. This originated from Africa and obviously became a big part of New Orleans/ Creole culture when African people were enslaved and brought to the United States. So the point of this explanation, is that this name was not chosen frivolously. It was chosen to educate others as I see so many wonderful people around the world loving and celebrating Blues, and all these beautiful pieces of what is now known as American culture, but I also want people to understand where those things come from. I know everyone knows the great Dr John’s album, but I was surprised that so many still had no idea what ‘Gris Gris’ was or where it came from. Hence Beaux Gris Gris & The Apocalypse was formed.’

On their launch EP ‘The Appetizer’ (2017) they perform ‘Crazy’, and yes, it’s the Willie Nelson song, crazier than Patsy Cline, crazier than even a whiskey sour can drown, focussed purely on the nicotine strength of Greta’s voice. And where does Roy Orbison fit into this scenario? Because they record his ‘Blue Bayou’ on the same EP? Did she have pin-ups of the Big ‘O’ on her bedroom wall when she was in her teens? Are there other covers that they enjoy playing? Or other songs that they’d like to cover? Instead, from debut album ‘Love And Murder’ (2019), there’s a slow pleading Soul groove to ‘Don’t Let The Bastards Drag You Down’, with a hint of Muscle Shoals as Greta testifies and the guitar solo melts like molasses. Lead track from the same album, ‘Heartbreaker’ is sleazy motel Blues with necessary violence, headed straight for hell, with guitar lines that bleed like open wounds chasing brothel-red demons.

Now, the broad tonal palette of ‘Good Times End Times’ is expansive enough to draw in the slow skanking lovers rock of ‘Bungalow Paradise’ where they’re ‘wasting our lives away… smoking weed and drinking beer.’ To the relentless gunshot drum-ticks counting-out the passing time of ‘Alone’, with back-up vocals by Ali Coyle, building into a stately keyboard break. Seldom has immobility moved so enticingly. ‘Trouble Is Coming’ – the album’s longest track at six-minutes, walks like a shadow through the desert storm. Electronic loops and quivers conspire with crazed keyboards as Greta’s voice rips and shatters, teetering on the delicious brink of chaos.

The low bass of ‘Is This The Blues?’ leads into the story of a poor girl who had it all but wants more, everyone has a hard-luck tale to tell, was there ever blood on the soles of your feet? – ‘let’s blame the immigrants’ Greta asides with a sharp ironic bite. ‘Tell me what kind of music do you like?’ she talk-sings, yelps and yells. It’s likely that to fully appreciate their blistering mix of soulful energies and intense musicianship it helps to experience the band live. To feel the extra adrenalin walloping through the heart valves, the centipede track of prickles over the skin, the starry void that whirls in the lesser intestine. What ‘Rockshot Magazine’ calls this ‘collective of New Orleans-inspired, American Blues-Folk-Soul band, who refuse to be pigeon-holed.’ But the album winds down with the walking bass and late-night piano of ‘Lucid’, a slippery singalong kind of infection with Greta emoting a smouldering torch-song with stinging blues guitar solo. Dreams are fragile, she chooses to dream of him, howling against the coming of the dawn.

Beaux Gris Gris & The Apocalypse have headlined festivals across Europe. You might have caught them at the UK ‘Upton Festival’ or ‘The Great British R&B Festival’, but there’s also been the Moulin (Netherlands) and ‘Blues Alive’ (Czech Republic). Inevitably, there’s more. While Beaux Gris Gris is their music manifestation, the pair also coordinate a vision-mixing creative agency called ‘Grow Vision’, offering multimedia content and development. Davey’s one-hour three-minute docu-movie ‘The Canary Effect’ (2006), examining the devastating mistreatment of Native Americans, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Then Daryl Hall – yes, the Hall & Oates guy, asked them to take over, direct and produce his Palladia-MTV show ‘Live From Daryl’s House’ for Viacom, elevating the show into an hour-long Dolby-surround premium mainstay on VH1 and MTV Live. Is Daryl Hall one of the good guys? Which of his hits do they most enjoy?

Their visual work on the Taco Bell Fiftieth Anniversary celebrations secured them a prestigious W3 Award. The latest ‘Grow Vision’ feature documentary ‘The Unbelievable Plight Of Mrs Wright’ has won multiple festival awards and secured distribution through Gravitas Ventures. And the duo are currently producing a documentary on Blues veteran Larry McCray for Joe Bonamassa’s ‘Keeping The Blues Alive Records’ label.

Credit is due for their patient indulgence in consenting to hear my intrusive and prurient probings. Of course, this was not an examination, there being no legal requirement to answer in full, or, indeed, at all! If there’s more that I’ve not covered, they’re free to add whatever they consider it needs. But my intention was nothing more than to create a feature to playfully turn on some new ears to Beaux Gris Gris & The Apocalypse. For example, what kind of Four Horsemen Of The ‘Apocalypse’ do they anticipate happening? An environmental meltdown? A social-economic collapse? A Zombie Apocalypse? This is the frivolous wind-down question… unless there are serious overtones too? ‘If you were standing there watching the sun implode in its last days it would probably be the most amazing sight’ suggests Robin sprightly, ‘there’s going to be nothing after this, but – WOW! – look at it. So you might as well make the most of it!’

Make no mistake about it, it’s time for the apocalypse…

BY ANDREW DARLINGTON

 

 

2017 – ‘The Appetizer’ EP (2017), with (1) ‘Crazy’, (2) ‘Blue Bayou’, (3) ‘Jambalaya’, (4) ‘Don’t Let Me Die In Florida’

2019 – ‘Love And Murder’ (Grow Vision 8-59725-72915-0) with (1) ‘Heartbreaker’, (2) ‘Cyclone’, (3) ‘Louisiana Good Ride’, (4) ‘Thrill Me’, (5) ‘Baby Baby’, (6) ‘Don’t Let The Bastards Drag You Down’, (7) ‘What’s My Name’, (8) ‘When My Baby Was Rich’, (9) ‘Let Your Groove Work’, (10) ‘Have Mercy’.

Their debut album spawned Top 10 hits in genre charts across Europe, including a no.13 place in the ‘Classic Rock Magazine’ ‘Top 50 Albums Of The Year’, who described it as ‘a sensual, vibrant cocktail’.

2022 – ‘Good Times End Times’ (Grow Vision GVBGG102), eight songs across 33-minutes playing time, with (1) ‘Fill Me Up’ 2:47, (2) ‘Bungalow Paradise’ 3:39, (3) ‘Alone’ 3:50, (4) ‘Trouble Is Coming’ 6:00, (5) ‘Is This The Blues’ 3:41, (6) ‘Gris Gris’ 3:11, (7) ‘Watching The World Fall Down’ 3:42, (8) ‘Lucid’ 5:54. Greta Valenti: lead vocal, percussion, melodies and lyrics @GRETAVALENTI

Robin Davey: lead guitar, bass, additional melodies and lyrics @THEROBINDAVEY

Emma Jonson: piano, keyboards, vocals @emmajonsonmusic

Mark Barrett: drums, percussion @markadrianbarrett

Stephen Mildwater: bass, keyboards, acoustic guitar, vocals @STEPHENMILDWATER

Previous members:

Steve Maggiora: keyboards

Ali Coyle: bass (on ‘Love & Murder’)

Bob Fridzema: keyboards (on ‘Love & Murder’)

Phrases from Neil Mach interview with Raw Ramp https://rawramp.me/2022/04/01/interview-with-beauxgrisgris-goodtimesendtimes-neworleansblues-gretavalenti-robindavey/

https://www.beauxgrisgris.com/ 

[email protected]

 

 

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3 poems for pervs

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor

#1

ana de armas sipping orange juice
in tight / white / jeans
the future is disintegrating in a spoon

#17

yellow rose & the fusing atoms of atoms
i expose myself to the sounds of a nuclear summer
tipping gently into your eyes

#85

dreams of shattered glass
south, crabs scuttling past 
volatile; snow on the surface of the sun

 

 

 

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Laura Lofts

 

 

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 Onions, Potatoes

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor


        

Only elemental seeming this moment,
I hide my ground-root person at work
talking to a coworker, realize it, ashamed
of fear drove it. Back at my desk, from your 
office a message—a flare of your being
in daylight: Get potatoes and onions
on way home. Grinning, we stir fry
them full-toot steaming after work’s
grimaces. Human shouts and car bleats
jump roof onto our small back porch, air
not sea-breeze fresh, more bat-breath
strange. Food tasty. Then walk a quieted
sidewalk with you knows me, streetlight on
pumpkin-orange dress hints your shape.
Above, your face, even gentler voice.

 

 

George Shelton

 

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Ice Dance

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor

We are time-poor cash average jumble sailors walking uncertainly
in the shining wake of S Class cruisers’ wheel ruts
A woman with a radiator under each arm is spinning
Uncontrollable on a random iceflow caused by somebody
who thought that boiling water might help three hours ago

God walkers droving their unwilling masters forward
across fishbelly moraines of freezefoot waste shiver
Their godshit stains pristine glaciers with their word
where the drinking congregation picks cards and mouth prayers

An ironic Iceland van with ‘vegan’ on the back sits abandoned
in three inches of snow, joined by another from Morrison’s
displaying plump roast flesh with all the trimmings
and a table full of plastic packed crackers
waiting to be shared between Brexit riven relatives

Their drivers lost on the suburban glacier meet tearfully
and strike up a spirited rendition of Torvill & Dean’s Bolero routine
Laszlo dragging Gary gracefully through the black slush along the bus route
before taking him confidently into a hold, raising him to the skies as an offering

The horizon is a round and frosted cake
that I stab at from 2 miles away with a massive fork I found in a skip
in order to gorge on imaginary dried fruits soused in brandy
My dizzying hunger forces me to go full Bambi
smashing my knee on discarded white goods hidden in a drift
Shivering chip shop trash cat lapping at my blood
The queue for A&E starts across the road
monitored by a gladding live tweeting local MP
who comes to check on my progress smiling all the while
She watches me heal of my own accord, checking my immigration status
with the Home Office on her retro Blackberry

Blackberry, black cherry Coke, pour some cheap rum in it for warmth
Black ice, this hunger, this dance across low sun English tundra
Standing dutiful in fealty at the spin of wheels overcooking on glacé corners
Could have walked, could have been standing where I stand
Black humour, thin ice abyssal, a precariat red bill deep waiting  
to lose our feet if we become complacent in our walking

We slip, we fall, and call for help that maybe comes, maybe doesn’t
Sinking slow beneath the surface to join with the fossil record    
When the sun rises more and the snows melt and the cars return
when we are forced from our desire lines
back to the uneven safety of the pavement
there will still be black ice waiting…

 

 

Barry Fentiman Hall

 

 

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The Truth About ‘Net Zero’: A Diabolical Agenda Sold as a Saviour Formula

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Julian Rose


‘Net Zero’, what does it mean? Does anyone know? Who dreamt-up this slogan?

Put together, these two words don’t actually have any meaning. ‘Net’ is usually used as a shortened form of ‘netto’ (netto/brutto) a term used in accountancy describing a sum of money remaining after tax or expenses have been deducted.

So what could ‘Net Zero’ possibly mean? That nothing will be left once zero carbon has been achieved?

The term seems to ape, no doubt for good reason, the one chosen to describe the blackened hole in the ground left after the devastation of 9/11: Ground Zero.

Look at it this way, by reducing carbon dioxide to nil (zero carbon) all plant life dependent for its growth on this natural gas, will die. By extension, all humans and animals dependent upon the oxygen that plants produce, via the conversion of carbon dioxide into oxygen, will also die. Basic biology reveals that is indeed the case.

So what the inventors of ‘Net Zero’ seem to be suggesting is that the objective is to end all plant, animal and human life by 2050. Or have I got something wrong? Have ‘they’ quietly dropped CO2 as the arch baddie of the past three decades – and are now trying to make simple ‘carbon’ the source of all our woes?

This is, after all, what they did by surreptitiously shifting ‘global warming’ into ‘climate change’ a couple of decades ago. A classic slight of hand by the cabal spin doctors.

Let’s scrutinise the history a little more thoroughly. The World Economic Foundation (WEF) is acting as lead player of the project known as ‘Stop Global Warming’. A project which states that a deadly form of anthropogenic ‘warming’ is being caused by the burning of fossil fuels, and that the stated need is therefore to completely dispense with all fossil fuels by 2050.

But doing a little elementary research reveals that what one sees coming out of factory chimneys, in ubiquitous media photographs, is not CO2. It is mostly water vapour, plus nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, methane, water vapour and various forms of particulates, with noxious CO2 forming less than 5% of these emissions.

This corroborates with scientific tests done on the composition of the upper atmosphere, which find that man made CO2 makes a contribution of just 0.04% above natural atmospheric CO2.

So what the perpetrators of ‘net zero’ are doing is to take an essential component of nature, without which neither we nor plant life could survive, and make it into a demon, responsible for causing catastrophic changes to the world’s climate.

This is, of course, an outrageous conclusion to come to; but should its outrageousness cancel out its logic? Could it be that all two thousand ‘scientists’ employed by the International Commission on Climate Change’ (IPCC) failed to get a pass in biology at secondary school – and then went on to become Emeritus experts on climate change?

The fact is that ‘Net Zero’ is telling us that ‘we the people’ are to be wiped-out, along with the flora and fauna of the planet; while the elite cabal running this deception racket have created their own unique CO2 subterranean storage ecosphere, of thriving plants, pure water and all the nutrients needed to carry on pretty much as before. Maybe better?

If psychopaths form a majority of the cabal that runs this planet – and that looks probable – then announcing that The Great Reset/Green New Deal has adopted ‘Net Zero’ by 2050, has a certain logic. Because to a psychopath, sentient people are strange unreal beings, their emotions and feelings being incomprehensible and alien.

Therefore, looked at from the perspective of the psychopath, among the first thing to be done to ‘save the planet’ would be to find a good reason to get rid of the anthropogenic (human) causal agent behind the ‘destruction of the planet’ wouldn’t it?

But in the meantime, Mr Schwab and his aspiring team of henchmen want us ‘to be happy’, and have therefore found it helpful to remove all our private property and wealth and keep it for themselves – once the depopulation process is well enough advanced and provided there is little or no resistance to their ploy forthcoming.

Our ‘happiness’ will of course, be due to the fact that Herr Schwab and his main advisor Noah Yuval Harari, have studied the bible, and taken note of the words of Jesus Christ “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

So they will kindly do the removal of the riches job for us, liberating us from our private wealth and therefore releasing us from the material ties that prevent us attaining a higher state of consciousness.

One can see by uncle Klause’s patronising attitude to his hand picked dictators that he is proud of having found such a convenient way of opening heaven’s gates for humanity and thereby simultaneously ‘saving the world from global warming’.

Killing two birds with one stone is a sought after achievement for the soulless psychopath.

Achieving ‘Net Zero’ must be done with a smile. After all, making people believe that ‘to save the world’ they must first of all abandon their accustomed diets and instead chew on greatly superior laboratory raised and processed chicken thighs, garnished with a sprinkling of ground insect bodies and a special side dish of genetically modified hydroponically raised tomatoes – may not be easy. So a big American style smile should do the trick.

However a frown may be necessary to convey the seriousness of the fact that if cows are allowed to remain part of the farm animal kingdom, their survival will depend upon wearing Covid style ‘methane blocking’ masks recently awarded a special environmental prize by King Charles 111 for their contribution to slowing global warming.

But ‘a smile’ may once again be necessary to convey the fact that farmers who tend the fields are to be replaced by armies of robots, leaving the human element to be ‘cared for’ by 5/6G powered Smart Cities. Places in which every need will be catered for, by an all seeing all doing digitalised electro magnetic grid known as the ‘internet of things’. An electro magnetically charged version of Big Brother which will monitor human activities 24’7 and no doubt administer a sharp shock on anyone who steps out of line.

All this, you understand, is just the precursor for we ‘non psychopaths’ to be upgraded into chipped and cloned cyborgs, known as Transhumans.

Selling this one may not be so difficult, as the sales slogan will be “Let us do your thinking for you.” And since a rather significant proportion of mankind seems largely incapable of meaningful thought, it may be quite easy to sell them the added convenience of letting a piece of tech take over what’s left of the onerous task of having to activate one’s brain cells.

By 2050 these Transhumans will be needed as servants in the psychopaths’ underground palaces. The psychos having drained the planet of oxygen and having already killed-off a large percentage of humans via weaponised vaccines and a plethora of special laboratory designed diseases.

Not a pretty tale to tell, I’m afraid. But can anyone categorically tell me I’ve got it all wrong? That it is not the elite cabal dream goal to have a clinically sterilized and ‘purified planet’ by 2050 – in what amounts to a kind of ‘eugenics of man and nature’?

Is this the image that Net Zero is supposed to conjure-up? To sufficiently incite us to give-up our lives for whatever it is supposed to stand for? Ground Zero mark 2?

There are demons on the loose. They thrive on chaos and fear. They muddle-up greenhouse gases, methane, carbon and whatever other elements of nature they can sell as speeding-up the arrival of Armageddon. It’s a sort of game – in which, at any time, any one factor can be pointed-up as the evil agent of planetary destruction.

They get their greatest kicks form subverting the trajectory of human life into becoming the reverse of what evolution intends. They like to distort language and the meaning of words so as to create a twisted version of reality.

Thus, ‘Net Zero’ is a diabolical agenda sold as a saviour formula.

But once we know this, we are more than half way towards defeating it. Awareness is the crucial first step of our collective liberation.

 

Julian Rose

 

Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and holistic teacher. He is Co-founder of the Hardwick Alliance for Real Ecology HARE https://hardwickalliance.org/ Julian’s latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is strongly recommended reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info

 

 

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A Folktale from the New Revolution

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor

 

After the printing press and the seed drill, there was nowhere else to go, so the King proclaimed a competition to change the world that rang throughout the land. There were heralds in village squares, notices on church doors, and obligatory fittings for glass slippers, though the latter could be a mistranslation. There might have been TV specials, but the date is uncertain and anachronism is tantamount to arachnophobia, and nobody wants a spider in their glass slipper. After a year and a day, a picaresque adventure, three wishes, and rather more anthropomorphism and suspension of disbelief than a modern audience can tolerate, all the would-be inventors lined up amongst the trumpets and rosy-cheeked rustics. Three cheers! Each cocky lad held his own machine for making clouds, each identical to the others and just as useless. Woe! cried the King, and had his Fool beheaded. But a token trope of a fine young lass in man’s array stepped out of the crowd with a glittering device. More cheers! More trumpets! Declare the Fool a saint! What does it do? cried the King and the commoners, and even the dead head of the blessed Fool. This, said the maid with eyes as bright as glass slippers, and her words ran like spiders throughout the land.

 

 

 

Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor

 

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Gerry Ranson and Mule Freedom Music PR

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor

www.vivelerock.net

https://www.facebook.com/MuleFreedomPR

Gerry works with ‘Vive Le Rock’ magazine and promotes a nicely eclectic range of music performers as ‘Mule Freedom’. Here are some of his latest prodigies, with some ‘observations’ on their latest albums from Alan Dearling:

Neverland Ranch Davidians


This is an album full of music that rises from the swamplands of the USA. It conjures up a Stephen King-type of range of sounds. Often feral, veering from the short, screamer-style punkish tracks in the style of The Cramps into lengthier rumbling tracks, full of fuzz-filled intensity and menace. This is a trio courting controversy. As Mule Freedom’s PR sheet suggests, “The Neverland Ranch Davidians don’t care a hoot for the niceties of popular culture, their chosen moniker a collision referencing two late 20th Century icons, Michael Jackson and ‘Waco Saviour’ David Koresh.”

At their darkest, they are pretty formidable. That’s their strength. They are grungy and seemingly from an alien planet. It’s in their darker tracks like the opener, ‘The Gospel’ and ‘Stigmata’ that they excel, and in the never-benign, ‘Aqua Velveteen’ with its lines like:

“They said, is it a boy? Is it a girl? Whatever it is, it’s Aqua Velveteen.”  

‘Aqua Velveteen’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnGqahPKI74

A clue and a touchstone for NRD’s is that frontman, Tex Mosley was conscripted to play with his band, The Neighborhood Bullys by none other than Suzi Quatro on her ‘The Spotlight’ album, which included a version of Goldfrapp’s ‘Strict Machine’ that reminds that how at her best Suzi can make the Velvet Undergound sound like MOR-music!  Some of the tracks are fairly predictable punk soul-band fare, like ‘Rat Patrol’ and ‘Fat Back’, but their version of the Ray Charles song, ‘I Believe to My Soul’, is exquisitely warped and twisted. They would make an interesting support band for somebody like Dr Feelgood…there’s certainly something of a riot going on…

If you enjoy ‘uncomfortable’ music played with menace and originality, this is your Trip!

Tex Mosely adds: “Rock ‘n’ Roll is still respected and celebrated in Europe, so we were happy to catch the ear of a cool Euro label like Heavy Medication” (which was established by American ex-pat in Warsaw in Poland in 2018).

 

The Higsons: Run Me Down – the complete 2Tone Recordings

Forty years on from the release of The Higsons’ single, ‘Run Me Down’ we have the Record Store launch of an album of tracks recorded for Jerry Dammers’ 2 Tone label. Charlie Higson and his mates had formed the band at East Anglia University in 1980 and were part of the New Wave of post-punk music which gave a nod in the direction of earlier ska music (and indeed The Specials). Charlie’s vocal stylings are reminiscent of the slightly sneering cocky-boy sounds of much punk and 2 Tone music. It’s a tad off-kilter, but the overall sound of the Higsons still sounds quite vibrant and fresh over 40 years on. Punk-funk. Hi NRG. Big, brash brass, good beats, rumbling, funky walking bass lines and syncopated drums. There is one heck of a lot of going on. Plus a generous helping of ‘oohs and ahhs’ on the vocals.

The release features three versions of ‘Run Me Down’, but for me, ‘Ylang Ylang’ is probably the standout, and most interesting track. Real odd rumblings in the jungle.

“Sleeping all day – in a tent drunk…

Take my love and run.”

Charlie Higson has become a successful TV scriptwriter, featured on ‘The Fast Show’ and elsewhere, and Terry Edwards is a go-to session musician and performs with Simon Charterton and friends in the ‘Near Jazz Experience’.

‘Ylang Ylang’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji2vCdodLVw

Angus McOg: Cirrus

Tinkling piano, falsetto vocals. Aural images of floating clouds high up in the sky. A lot of tracks drift along with Antonio Tavoni (aka Angus McOg) singing in an intonated Italian English. Americana UK magazine reviewed the new ‘Cirrus’ album as:

“Melodic and easy-going indie folky Americana.”

That sounds pretty accurate. The music is often elliptical, lilting and rather under-stated. It’s pretty, it glistens and is largely easy listening. It’s full of gentle soundscapes, perhaps offering a reminder of John Martyn or solo Robin Williamson’s Gaelic music. But if John Martyn provided ‘Grace and Danger’, McOg provides just the ‘Grace’ part. There’s some beautiful trumpet parts from Enrico Pasini and greater signs of vigour on the track ‘Chances’, enlivened by some guitar histrionics.

But, this is not really my musical bag. If you like musical lightness…then maybe it will be for you.   https://www.facebook.com/angusmcog/

CUT: Dead City Nights

Also hailing from Italy, CUT is an outfit whose music should be played LOUD! They have produced the tracks on this, their seventh album, without being able to take them out on road-tests with an audience. But, they should not be worried. This is a strong set of post-punk rock ‘n roll. Singer Ferruccio Quercetti says: “We are waiting for you to show up on the ‘Dead City Nights’ tour to rediscover these songs in their second life on stage.”

It’s really easy to picture the band in full flight, sweaty, noisy and surrounded by pogoing, manic fans in a musical mosh pit. They have a jazz undertow imbued in their music, plenty of hypnotic repetition, blends of Hawkwind riffs, intertwined with strangely idiosyncratic Talking Heads’ vocal phrasings. Discord and dis-chords. It’s easy to imagine Ferruccio ferociously screaming, “You’re all going to Die!” The album is like its title: Dead City Nights, full of grungy nihilism. Darkness. As in the track, ‘Sacred Path’, “I’ll never kill the pain.” This ripples over into the concluding track, ‘All Dreams are Gone’ with splintering sounds of a train-time rhythm sounding a bit like ‘Pretty Vacant’.

Refreshingly dark sonic attacks, whispered lyrics live from the crypt, walls and wails of feedback in a Dead City Night…and as Ferruccio says: “…everything is still dark around us…but at least we have made sense of all this night-time.”

Prepare to be unsettled…and enter into the dark, horror-worlds of CUT!

‘Dead City Night’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndvcRYrSl9M

 

 

 

 

Alan Dearling

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Lynch Mob

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Rupert Loydell

Eraserhead, Claire Henry (120pp, BFI/Bloomsbury)
Good Day Today. David Lynch Destabilises the Spectator, Daniel Neofetou (93pp, Zero Books)
Twin Peaks: The Return – It’s a Wonderful Lie!, Gino C. Mongelli (340pp, Amazon)


Claire Henry’s book in the wonderful British Film Institute series, each of which focuses on an individual ‘film classic’, is a thoughtful and individual look at David Lynch’s unsettling late 1970s black and white film Eraserhead. A claustrophobic 89 minutes of surreal and shadowy unreality, set mostly in windowless apartment rooms in an industrial dystopian town, it is both intensely funny and horrific and has continued to elude deconstruction and meaning since it was first screened.

One thing it did do was present many of the tropes Lynch has continued to use since: doppelgängers, decay, parallel universes, and bizarre, fragmented stories. Henry convincingly talks about Lynch in relation to Francis Bacon’s paintings of sliding skin and facial disfiguration, which is a brief consideration of how Eraserhead has influenced and informed many other films.

In the first chapter Henry considers the role/motif of ‘The Baby’ in the film, writing as a pregnant mother as she does so, but also considering fears relating to parenthood and Eraserhead‘s nightmare extended family, as well as how the film’s models were made and the industrial city and soundtrack produced. Chapter 2 moves onto a consideration of how the film is contained within a brilliantly conceived, constructed and mostly implied world. Viewers are immersed in this world from the moment the film starts, with no explanation or notion of reality; and they do much of the creation of the world for themselves.

Eraserhead is hyper-real in many ways, with Henry suggesting in her third chapter that the inability to summarise or explain the film, whilst viewing or in retrospect, having watched it, produces a dream state or psychological transformation in the viewer. ‘The Viewer Becomes the Dreamer’ is the bold chapter title, but the discussion also encompasses Lynch’s practice and use of Transcendental Meditation and how it informs his film-making. The chapter is the most intriguing and ambitious here, but also the most confusing, whilst the following chapter considers the film as ‘The Ultimate Midnight Movie’.

Here, Henry charts how the film’s notoriety and cult status gradually evolved, originally because of a distributor’s and film scheduler’s stubborn dedication, then word-of mouth acclaim, followed by re-releases to follow-up fans’ interest in Lynch’s work as he achieved fame (or notoriety) with the likes of Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks. Gradually, Henry argues, Eraserhead has been subsumed into a whole body of work by Lynch, just as the term ‘Lynchian’ has entered the vocabulary of film criticism. The book is an intriguing addition to the BFI Film Classics library, although I do wish they had used a film still on the front, not the awful drawing that they chose.

Daniel Neofetou’s book – published back in 2012 , but which I have only just come across –  is not so much a discussion of Lynch as a political or sociological treatise which uses Lynch’s films as a critical lens or example. It is basically an argument for recognition of the complexity of life and individual interpretation and belief, set against the then emerging authoritarianism and moral outrage the likes of David Cameron was promoting in 2012. Neofetou’s writing is intriguing and difficult as he struggles to make claims for what was once called postmodernism: no absolute truths, only relative or personal ones; the questioning of values, linear history (as opposed to various and often conflicting histories), ‘fundamentalist positions’ and ‘religious imperialism’. At times touching on gnostic ideas, and admitting to a resulting instability and lack of knowledge, the book ends with the positive suggestion that we must learn to question and understand for ourselves rather than rely on what is accepted or common knowledge.

Although Claire Henry is critical of those who seek to explain and/or summarise Lynch’s films and art, and I might question – whilst admitting to being intrigued by – Daniel Neofetou’s appropriation of Lynch to discuss philosophy, it is Gino C. Mongelli who most embraces the Lynchian in his disorganised, rambling and at times mind-blowing volume, which is as ridiculous, addictive and strange as Twin Peaks: The Return, ostensibly the book’s subject matter, was.

Mongelli does not try to summarise and explain everything, he carefully presents various – often conflicting and contrasting – ideas which might explain what is going on. At various points it is suggested that the viewer is dreaming the whole thing, or a character is, or that there might be a difference between a character dreaming or being dreamed, or the notion that perhaps the actors themselves are outside the Lynchian world they are acting in. Who is who and who is what? Why does Lynch love The Wizard of Oz so much, and does it hold the key to the series? (Probably not, to be honest.)

There is time travel, absence, superheroes, gnosticism, demonology, magic, the holy grail, chains of associations, mind-blowing ideas, ridiculous propositions, conspiracy theories and confusion. Once we understand what ‘reality tunnels’ are (I still don’t) we apparently should be able to embrace the fact that ‘[i]n Lynch’s work, miscommunications and failures of understanding are often used to describe the confusion’. Mongelli also suggests that ‘the way you look at the world means you either find gibberish or meaning’ and that ‘[w]e must try to make sense of it all ourselves’, ultimately buying in to Lynch’s reliance on intuition and ‘inner knowing’ to ‘discern more of the greater pattern at work’.

Whilst at times I longed for Mongelli to tell us where the ideas he re-presents came from, rather than just name the (often obscure online) authors, I loved trying to make my way through his potpourri of info-dumps, theories, observations and comments. If at times I skipped a few pages (I am not going to engage with Ken Wilber’s ideas ever again, having been hassled by some of his ‘disciples’ who were more like aggressive cult members!) and simply sometimes failed to understand the suggested connections, It’s a Wonderful Lie! is the kind of book I like: one that produces more questions than answers and is entirely appropriate to its subject matter.

 

 

Rupert Loydell

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Zephyr Sounds Sunday Sermon No. 113

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor

Steam Stock
 

Tracklist:
Ennio Morricone – The Strong
Rev’ Willie Green & the Clovertones – Didn’t it Rain
Bob Dylan with Joan Baez – The Water is Wide (live)
Sufjan Stevens – Jacksonville
R.E.M. – You Are the Everything
Kate Bush – Watching You Without Me
Tony Joe White – Elements and Things
Louis Armstrong and His Band, Dave Brubeck, Lambert, Hendricks And Ross, Carmen McRae – They Say I Look Like God
Gram Parsons – Brass Buttons
Smashing Pumpkins – Crush
Jim Ghedi & Toby Hay – Bright Edge Deep
Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Crudup – That’s All Right
Nina Simone – See Line Woman
Elliott Smith – Oh Well, Okay
Roxy Music – If There is Something

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TO OUR SIBLINGS IN THE STRUGGLE

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor

TO OUR SIBLINGS IN THE STRUGGLE:
(PROJECT PHOENIX, TAKE 2…)

Now is the time to talk to each other, to speak to each other, to define ourselves as we are. But above all, (and now more than ever) it’s the time to act… Logically, as it concerns our lovingly and rabidly anarchic nature, we are more than decided to combat this authoritarian pestilence to the end. And to move (firmly!) on to destructive Direct Action, against all of this senseless, criminal, and fascist comedy; facing off these disgusting powers and aberrant “spectacle” that is designed to let one of our most beloved among us die in a harsh medieval style prison regime… Valiant and armed to the teeth, daring insurgent accomplices, anarchist comrades from all latitudes: we were persecuted and shot down, in these years of death and lead, and even then we battle on. Not only have they not defeated us, but we’ve grown, in numbers as much as in conscience and will to attack… There’s not much else to say. Fuck banners, self-indulgent demonstrations, and inoffensive slogans and chants in front of the disgusting embassies of the murderous Italian state… It’s time to demonstrate to what extent are the threats made by our anarchic hordes, real and palpable (((A)))

IF COSPITO* DIES, WELCOME TO HELL, all across the planet…
(* Since 20 October 2022, Alfredo Cospito, a 55-year-old individualist anarchist, imprisoned for years for various actions publicly claimed by himself, has been on hunger strike against the 41bis detention regime and the life sentence to which he has been subjected for several months now.)

THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY,
(Urgent and Armed Poem…)

And… who will pay,
if our Alfredo dies?

We already made a list:
Let’s spread it around, people!

If they tie our wings,
We’ll rip-off their heads!

If they take away our dreams,
We’ll be their (worst) nightmare.

A river of blood will flow,
It will drown them very soon.

Yes. We’re “The Anarchists”:
The usual suspects.

We’ve lost so much already,
That no one will be able to defeat us!

Can they command the wind?
Can they order the clouds?

We’re the birds of the storm.
That’s what they’ve made us/we’ve become.

For Santiaguito Maldonado; and for
Sole, Edu, el Urubu and many others.

We anarchists have Memory
That has been more than demonstrated!

It’s a memory that is Present in the Struggle,
And against all forecasts.

A gale of vindication; and
For the love/rage of people in revolt.

Who they thought was dead, and doesn’t shut up.
They’re waiting right around the corner.

Let’s strike them, comrades: there.
Where and when they least expect it!

Loving (Insurrectionary) Cells shine on these warm nights.
BROTHERS AND SISTERS, WE WILL ILLUMINATE THE DARKNESS:
THEY WILL NOT BE ABLE TO STOP US.

Expect us.

PD: Vengeance is a dish best served cold. Let’s take good care of ourselves… @:-D

Juana Rouco Nucleus
Virginia Bolten Nucleus
Pascual Vuotto Nucleus
Joaquín Penina Nucleus
Amanecer Fiorito Nucleus
Salvadora Medina Nucleus
González Pacheco Nucleus

Pampa Libre Cell
Informal Anarchist Federation
International Revolutionary Front
FAI/FRI onwards!!!

(Reprinted from Anarchist News, https://anarchistnews.org)

 

 

The Collective

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From Sylhet to Spitalfields

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor

 


Bengali Squatters in 1970s East London

Shabna Begum

This book explores the hidden history of the Bengali squatters’ movement. Faced with institutional discrimination in council housing and the existential threat of the National Front, hundreds of Bengali families in 1970s East London decided to squat, taking over entire streets and estates.

With the support of the Race Today collective, squatters formed the Bengali Housing Action Group (BHAG), which organised support and vigilante groups to keep the community safe. Using oral history interviews and archival research, this book looks at the Bengali community’s contribution to this little-known episode of East End history, and how it can inform present-day housing struggles.

•

‘This important and inspiring book recovers the radical history of the Bengali squatters’ movement active in Tower Hamlets in the 1970s. Through sparkling vignettes of the individuals involved, Begum provides deep insights into the forms of solidarity that sustained the movement and the political differences that also characterised it. It’s a powerful contribution to working-class and multicultural histories of Britain.’
     – Gurminder K. Bhambra, Professor of Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies
        (Global Studies), University of Sussex

‘Shabna Begum has written a brilliantly nuanced and long overdue study of the Bengali squatters’ movement in 1970s London. Through foregrounding varied and vivid voices of Bengali women and men of different generations and experiences, she demonstrates how their claims to dilapidated houses, as they faced down violent physical and institutional racism, were integral to a shared struggle to establish their rights as equal citizens.
   From Sylhet to Spitalfields captures how the battles for housing of British Bengalis and their allies were, in different ways, framed by anticolonial imaginations and the Bangladesh Liberation War.’  
    – Georgie Wemyss, Co-Director, Centre for Research on Migration,
        Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) at the University of East London

‘For too long, Britain’s postcolonial migrants have been neglected by histories of squatting and housing campaigns. From Sylhet to Spitalfields brings to life the community-based anti-racists that struggled for housing in East London, and a home in Britain. Begum’s moving accounts and sharp analysis are crucial for understanding how the right to housing is bound up with freedom from racism.’
     –  Adam Elliott-Cooper, author of Black Resistance to British Policing,
       Manchester University Press, 2021

‘Begum covers a fascinating yet neglected aspect of British South Asian history. The book details, with great vigour, the necessary political activism Bangladeshi communities engaged in in the 1960s and 1970s to forge a better life for themselves and those who came after them.  An engaging read, reflecting on and critically evaluating the historic political activism that has shaped the lives of British Bangladeshis in the present.’
    – Taj Ali, Industrial Correspondent at Tribune magazine

‘As a child of parents who made their first home in an East End squat and who were actively involved in this important but long overlooked social movement, Dr Shabna Begum’s book offers a compelling and long-awaited social history. A richly researched document, this book is not only an important historical record but gives a voice to the slowly forgotten activists who were in danger of becoming forgotten faces in fading photographs of the period.
   The struggle for equality took place with the backdrop of far right nationalism; Begum’s record reminds us how hard won some civil rights are. This book is a fitting testament to the struggles of a generation which was forced to appropriate a home out of necessity and neglect in the heart of Brick Lane, and from the humble origins of this squatting movement went on to build a key place in British society.’
    – Dr Halima Begum, CEO Runnymede Trust

•

To order visit https://lwbooks.co.uk/product/from-sylhet-to-spitalfields

 

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Rant

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor

 

 

Mike Ferguson

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Interview with Henry Rollins

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor

 

 

In this interview I talk with all round artistic individual Henry Rollins. Henry was frontman for Black Flag and then his group Rollins Band. He is a writer, he has acted, he is many things. Above all else Henry uses his voice to speak truth to Power.

A somewhat solitary and mysterious individual he has never shied away from human expression and a deep sensitivity in his service to others. 

Above image by photographer 
Ross Halfin
rosshalfin.com

website for Henry Rollins
henryrollins.com

publishing company
twothirteensixtyone

YouTube 
Official Henry Rollins

Rollins Band :: Live @ Auditorium Flog, Florence, Italy, 6/11/92
watch on youtube

Rollins Band (BBC 1993) [05]. Live Footage in Birmingham,UK
watch on youtube

Henry Rollins on Alcohol, Drugs and His Reagan Era Tattoos | Ep. 5 3/3 ARTST TLK | Reserve Channel
watch on youtube

Spotify
Henry Rollins

KCRW
kcrw.com/music/shows/henry-rollins

Instagram 
henryandheidi

Twitter
henryrollins

Britannica
britannica.com/biography/Henry-Rollins

Henry Rollins 
Good To See You Tour (2023) 
ticketmaster.henry-rollins

Thoughts on buildings and uses of spaces?
It is the story of the city dweller. How does one live a comfortable/functional life with limited space? Space equals freedom equals income. For years, I lived in very small places. Now I live in a place with a fair amount of space, nothing grand, but I still live in a small space mind-set. I have always appreciated smart use of space. When I started touring Europe a lot, I was taken with the high ceilings in some of the rooms I saw on the continent, how rooms catch natural light, how they light via artificial light. Almost all rooms I see I try to figure out how to arrange a workspace.
Are you interested in engineering? 
If so what types? 
Not really. Not that it’s not an interesting field. A lot of things go over my head, aspects of build and structure falls in that category.
Is Art powerful? 
I think it can be quite powerful. It’s great to see kids at galleries stare at paintings or sculpture and you see all the wheels turning as they think new thoughts and interpret the work as they see it, they realize they have an opinion, an imagination. That’s the kind of power I’m talking about. A young person feels like he or she doesn’t fit in with their family, or schoolmates, then they see the work of an artist, and suddenly, they have somewhere to go, a world opens up. Art considered this way, it is very powerful. I wish more priority was put on connecting young people with art. It could be part of national defence spending.
How does music impact culture? 
In America, Jazz music is part and parcel of the Civil Rights Movement. Punk Rock kept Rock and Roll from dying and launched some of the best music ever made in the Western World. I think music impacts culture by opening up young people’s minds and makes them better adults. It can be a tool to promote integration. I don’t think music can stop a war but it informs and is the stuff of culture.
Give your definition of the word Thespian? 
Someone who acts.
Are you interested in nutrition and diet? 
Yes. I have found that the better I eat, the better results I get. More energy, less stress, less depression. In my line of work, there’s a lot of expectation and obligation. I’m always looking for anything that will help me do my work better and good ingredients going in has been helpful. The older I get, the more it matters.
What books do you read? 
History. Books by journalists like Robert Fisk, books about bands and musicians. Pretty much anything but fiction and literature. I gave that up many years ago. I miss it but I think all that’s behind me. I have a different consideration of time now that I’m older. For me, literature, which I love, from a time when I knew less, seen less. In a way, my curiosity and experiences have kind of ruined me for fiction.
What subjects interest you? 
American politics and the history of political corruption in America, music, records, record collecting, travel, climate change, world history, presidential and writer’s biographies.
Describe yourself? 
Nobody from nowhere. Opportunist. Dead for many years.

 

 

 

 

Joshua Phillip

Rorschach Art Publication 
rorschacharchives.blogspot.com

 

 

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Looking and Seeing

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor

See Saw: a series of poems on art, Adrian Buckner £8.00, Leafe Press)

‘Poems on art’ – i.e. Ekphrasis. Wikipedia tells us that ‘ekphrasis… is a vivid, often dramatic, verbal description of a visual work of art, either real or imagined. Thus, “an ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art.”‘ Which, if correct (and I am in no position to argue) the poems in Adrian Buckner’s chapbook are not exactly ekphrastic, because they do not describe, and they are not dramatic – so we can leave that one behind.

But… Wikipedia goes on to say that ‘Ekphrasis has been considered generally to be a rhetorical device in which one medium of art tries to relate to another medium by defining and describing its essence and form, and in doing so, relate more directly to the audience, through its illuminative liveliness.’ I’m not sure I totally understand that – ‘describing its essence’ strikes me as a bit of academic-sounding tosh – but ‘ekphrastic’ perhaps is the word for Buckner’s poems in See Saw after all.

I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter. I’m not sure why I’m even mentioning it, except that the book’s subtitle might lead one to think that the poems in it are ‘about’ art, and ‘about’ certain paintings. And they aren’t, really. Rather, they are poems in response to paintings, and while the connection between painting and poem is necessarily and understandably close, we are neither talking of descriptions nor, strictly speaking, of interpretations, but of a creative consequence and, for the most part, poems able to stand alone without a painting to help keep them on their feet.

As such, they don’t require of the reader any knowledge of the paintings, although there are maybe a couple of poems where knowing the painting is more than a little bit useful and, anyway, the more you know the better, and looking up the paintings – before, during, or after reading the poem(s) – is an additional bonus pleasure. Indeed, the poems make you want to see the paintings – not so you can ‘get’ the poems, but because the poems strongly, and rightly, suggest that the seeing will be more than worthwhile. And that ‘seeing’ will be wide-ranging, because the paintings referenced span the best part of seven centuries.

The poem from – and I’m going to use ‘from’ rather than ‘about’ or ‘after’ – Fra Angelico’s ‘The Decapitation of St Cosma and St Damian’ is a perfect example of a poem that ‘works’ without the reader needing to know the painting. I quote it here in full:

     When I am called to account at The Hague
     I will say I was obeying orders
     Like the three lads on crowd control rota

     Look to the front row for the guilty
     The self-absolving gestures

     The more in sorrow than in anger
     Exporters of rational governance

     Through a swing of the sword
     A drone strike in the desert

Yes, there is a reference to the painting in the guilty looks of those in the front row, but it’s not a distraction, and the poem brings a chilling 21st century resonance to a 15th century painting. Similarly present-day chilling, and reminding us (if we need reminding) of the eternal darkness of some male intent, is the poem from Artemisia Gentileschi’s ‘Susanna and the Elders’:

     Be in no doubt Susanna
     We mean to invade
     More than your personal space

while Domenico Ghirlandaio’s ‘Old Man and Boy’, a wholly different painting and poem and kettle of fish, finds the poet commenting wryly on audience perceptions and writers’ productions:

     Touching
     They will call it

     And go on to write their novels
     Their brief lyrical poems

Buckner has looked at these paintings long and hard. The poem from Perov’s portrait of Dostoevsky captures perfectly the look in the subject’s eyes:

     I am not posed in the darkness
     I look from the dark
     Into a man’s soul

The poems I’ve mentioned so far might be described as fairly concrete in their mode of response to the paintings, but others, such as for example the poem from Karl Schmidt-Rotluff’s ‘Flowering Trees’, which concludes

     My heart’s flame
     My heart’s ease

reflect with a larger degree of abstraction, while another, the poem from Raoul Dufy ‘s ‘The Avenue du Bois de Boulogne’ is closer to  being more explicitly ekphrastic by directly mentioning what’s in the picture. Elsewhere, the artist himself makes an ‘appearance’, when Lowry’s ‘Seascape’ evokes his imagined voice or, if not voice, then thoughts:

     Tempted was I
     To put a little black dog on the shore?

     Perhaps a shivering family
     Enduring an awkward exchange?

This round-up of the varied approaches that the poems take explains what, in part, knocks me out about them: the range of response and tone of articulation Buckner achieves, from the chilling to the playful – and how pretty much always it’s a response not of the predictable kind. In that sense they are telling us that our encounters with art neither have to be what the textbooks and guidebooks tell us they should be, nor do they have to be po-faced and completely ‘serious’. They are saying that looking and seeing and using our imagination when engaging with art transcends classroom correctness and whatever someone else might tell us is the way to do it.

But all of that is something of a side issue to the fact that these are pretty much faultless poems that are a delight, an absolute pleasure to read.  They may be ‘brief’ and ‘lyrical’,  but they are also wonderfully executed and, to mix art-genre metaphors, note perfect. The volume concludes quite beautifully, and tellingly, with Fiona Rae’s ‘I need gentle conversations’:

     What the world needs now
     Is gentle conversations

     It’s the only thing
     There’s never been a picture of

 

 

      © Martin Stannard,2023

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Ladies and gentlemen!

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor

 

PARADISE DERANGED

La beaute sera CONVULSIVE ou ne sera pas – Andre Breton

 

 

Please try to forget – if  you can – those heretical convulsionnaires, dismissed by Diderot as ‘a sect of fools’, derided by experts of the day as an unfortunate by-product of the ‘moral inferiority’ of women.

More profitably, consider Baudelaire who said inspiration ‘has something in common with a convulsion’ and, he noted further, all sublime thought is ‘accompanied by a more or less violent nervous shock which has its repercussions at the very core of the brain.’

The essential, constitutive qualities of ‘convulsion’ may be detected in the oneiric aura of Paquita Valdes, as described by Balzac in La Fille aux Yeux d’Or.

 Balzac wrote: ‘there was something sombre, mysterious, sweet, tender, constrained and expansive, an intermingling of the awful and the celestial, of paradise and hell…’

Again, consider a landscape from Flaubert’s Salammbo: ‘An immense mass of shadow lay spread out before them, containing vague crests that looked like the gigantic waves of a petrified black ocean.’ 

A more recent example, ladies and gentlemen, may be the up-tempo classy yet anarchic mambo-cha staccato interpretation of Frenesi by Edmundo Ros with vocals by Caterina Valente – perhaps the ideal musical expression of convulsive beauty on account of its predominant sense of ‘apparent gratuitousness’ (Breton).

Finally, it was Garcia Lorca who reminded us that it is not a matter of theatrical intonation, dynamic vocal flourishes, skill or virtuosity, ‘but of a style that’s truly alive.’ Just like a little girl the poet saw one day in Puerto de Santa Maria singing and dancing a ‘corny Italian song… with such rhythms, silences and intention…’, that ‘she turned the Neapolitan gewgaw into something new and totally unprecedented…’ She has duende! 

Convulsive Beauty is paradise deranged.  

Thank you for listening, and

Goodnight!

 

 

 

A. C Evans

 

 

 

.

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SAUSAGE LIFE 263

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Colin Gibson

Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column which swears at the radio, even when it’s not on.

MYSELF: Knock knock
READER: Come in.
MYSELF: it’s a joke, stupid. Just say “who’s there”?
READER: Oh. Right. Go on then, who’s there?
MYSELF: Thérèse
READER: Thérèse who?
MYSELF: Thérèse drinks, Thérèse cakes, Thérèse Cuban cigars….
READER: God, you just can’t resist having a go, can you?
MYSELF: I’m a creature of habit, as the mother superior said to the heroin dealer.

TELEPATHETIC
The Clairvoyent duo Medium and Large return triumphantly to Upper Dicker Empire this month, having completed their sellout world tour of West Hartlepool and Darlington lap dancing clubs. The pair have asked me to inform fans that their recent merchandising sensation, The Road Congestion Tarot App is, predictably, sold out. However a voucher for a free psychic interaction with ‘Blobby’ their unique tea-leaf reading satnav is still valid until June 30th. Simply send a stamped self-addressed envelope, enclosing your car’s registration, your destination and a complete cup of tea (not just the leaves) to Medium & Large Ltd, PO box 666, Luxembourg, and remain in the car.

MAY DIVORCE BE WITH YOU
At Hastings Crown Court, a decree nisi has been awarded in the case of Mrs Onya Byche of Upper Dicker, who accuses her husband of mental cruelty. Eric Smorgasbord the solicitor acting for Mrs. Byche, a sufferer from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, told the jury that “on several occasions when his wife had been called away in her capacity as septic tank night-supervisor at the Upper Dicker sewage reclamation farm, she would return to find that Mr. Byche had, with malice and aforethought, superglued all the furniture to the ceiling, but in slightly different relative positions. As a result Mrs. Byche suffered severe anxiety attacks, causing her to act irrationally. After one such incident, when her husband had also glued the couple’s miniature Pomeranian poodle Ecoli, to a ceiling-mounted sofa from which he was forbidden, she called the fire brigade, who, from an extended turntable ladder, managed to drown the dog and accidentally flood the two upper floors and basement of the entire building.” The case continues

NEITHER A BORROWER…
Herstmonceux library, unlike libraries all over the country which are being closed, is actually to be renovated at great expense by celebrated architects Allfore Doone of Glasgow. One controversial change to the original plans, is to house all the talking books in a separate purpose-built soundproof section so as not to disturb the other books.
Also promised is a full excavation of the library’s Victorian catacombs, where non-payers of overdue book fines were once sent and chained to the wall to await a flogging from Andrew Pendulum, the notorious head librarian.  

…OR A LENDER BE
The recent story of Dylan Amlwg-Hiliol the Welsh taxi driver who borrowed a lawn mower from a neighbour and modified the engine to power a drone which he then used to smuggle wet wipes into Wormwood Scrubs, has reminded me of a regrettable personal experience. I once lent my sewing machine to an acquaintance for “a quick trouser alteration job”. Unscrupulously, before returning machine they used it to insulate the loft, completely rewire their house, and drain a septic tank. It was never the same after that. 

HANGOVER BREAKTHROUGH
In the search for a pain-free morning after, is mayonnaise the new Alo Vera?  Professor Gordon Thinktank, local inventor and wine buff, may be on the verge of a breakthrough. During a fact-finding trip to the Norwegian city of Fosnavåg he observed that people who had consumed the pungent local mayonnaise Håakenhurr (made with enzymes extracted from the testicles of Icelandic Herring which have been buried in volcanic mud for two years), before embarking on an ill-considered Scandinavian bender, were totally headache and nausea-free the next morning. “Traditionally,” Thinktank told us, “the citizens of Fosnavåg celebrate the long dark evenings between Tuesday and Sunday by drinking enormous quantities of illegally brewed fish-based vodka until they lose consciousness, yet unlike their Swedish cousins, the consumers of Håakenhurr, are rarely seen green-faced and vomiting into a hedge on the way to work in the morning.”

STUFFED
Hastings & St Leonards Warriors FC were beaten 8-0 last Wednesday by Gaelic League champions AC Bangor Beehives, ending their Lil-Lets Cup run of one game.  Relaxing after the game in Bangor’s famous karaoke n’ wine bar the Shinto & Shellaille, big-hearted Beehives’ manager Darragh Bigheart said, “Football is a game of two halves, or in Pat Hennessy’s case, eleven pints. Let’s face it we gave the Warriors the old one-two, followed up rapidly by the old three-four, a system I have been developing with the lads since yesterday afternoon. After a detailed video analysis we saw that what the Warriors lacked was midfield strength in their back four. We exploited their lack of depth at the front by staying deep, whereas they pursued a dead ball strategy with Craig Cattermole acting as a fake number nine. In a long ball game, the ball is played long, as opposed to a short ball game, where a shorter ball is used. We exploited this by playing all our short balls long, and increasing the length of our shorter balls. Their only quality player was Dutch defender Ruud van Smoot, but groin-kick specialist Liam Finnigan neutralised him by removing the top layer of skin on his shins. Football is a man’s game. Lets face it, some of these skirt-wearing foreign types are not averse to supping stout out of the wrong side of the glass.”
The big-hearted gealic supremo was later strechered off after a fan accidentally trod on his hand.

 

 

Sausage Life!

Click image to connect. Alice’s Crazy Moon is an offbeat monthly podcast hosted by Alice Platt (BBC, Soho Radio) with the help of roaming reporter Bird Guano a.k.a Colin Gibson (Comic Strip Presents, Sausage Life). Each episode will centre around a different topic chosen by YOU the listener! The show is eclectic mix of music, facts about the artists and songs and a number of surrealistic and bizarre phone-ins and commercials from Bird Guano. Not forgetting everyones favourite poet, Big Pillow!

NB: IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PAID SUBSCRIPTION TO SPOTIFY, THE SONGS WILL BE OF RESTRICTED LENGTH

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Three Poems

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Paying respects at the wrong funeral

Wouldn’t it be funny but beautiful
If I went to the wrong funeral
And paid my respects anyway

By blessing myself
Then finishing it off with an air kiss

And after that we all realised
There is but one love in this life

And it is us

 

When she said goodbye to me forever

Her kiss
On my
Cheek

Hit me
Harder

Than any
Punch

 

The only time God was scared

They’ll never be able to explain it
As well as you did

That the search for your own truth
Came from many fears

That even God was scared
That you would tell it

 

 
 Paul Butterfield Jr

 

 

 

.

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from six coffees with a madman

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Editor

 

coffee #2

 

The next city is no fun. It is all rivers and muds and boats and sundials and wild ponies and apple orchards and Plath’s grave (Hughes). We do not pick at the thread we left, instead put new sheets on the stripped bed and beginning our motions again. Today is the day for new lovers! A river muscles by my feet, taunting me with excess strength. I tell my lover, do not worry, for I am even stronger than this river– I have so many,      hundreds of muscles.

I am bursting with myocytes.

The frog laughs at me, and I…

Sip.

(mmm)

Looking at his hand, awestruck… simply and, may I admit, cleverly, redefine desire. It is no longer a strong feeling of wishing something to happen. It is no longer the blind man that craves sight.

In due course, I will write to the papers and let them know of this extraordinary discovery:

‘Redefinition Of Bodily Desire’

I am the best columnist in all the land. I’m actually fairly famous – I tell my framed lover. Actually, really, QUITE famous. I smoke menthol cigarettes with the celebrities. We crunch glass in bleeding mouths and dance on tables before the flies wake up. Tight trouser tango on the bathroom floor, noses full of stallions and eyes darting around; we talk all night long about how popular everybody is. Earnest forthcomings nip at our heels, we just humbly kick them away. Beige cocktail parties are kind of my thing – you know?

Really, rather famous… I glance back. He looks tremendous in this new location.

My love for this stranger sits in a neat space outlining his grey hand.

I do not touch it for fear of allowing the tetanus (which has been chasing me since birth) to get inside. The tetanus freezes your muscles in time, I am aware my photo frame man inherited the clostridium tetani when he was first created, so am careful not to upset him with my real lies (he will surely rea-lise).

I know he has a heart of galvanized steel, so it will NEVER cease to beat inside his tense state. Poor, poor creature… I am so very kind and loving and sweet and sensitive…

If only inland revenue could see me now!

The taxman redefined society three years ago. Death of the working class was the political driving force. Turned us all into       troglodytes, it did. Turned us into (pre)

                                                            socialites.

The hierarchy of rich and poor is something I wish neither to climb up nor slide down. I am happy where I am; in the coffee shop of beginners, sipping beside my blank lover. We don’t let society hold us back. We don’t let dentists hold us back. We sit only on yellow chairs.

I love the man in the frame according to how much I owe the bastard tax man.

 

 

 

Blossom Hibbert

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The Thing With The Morning Glory

Posted on 18 March, 2023 by Kushal Poddar


 
Remind me why I less often opt for 
this lane that features a violet footnote
to the summer; they call her the Railway creeper.
(What’s your story, Morning Glory?)

I piss, salt against salt, a few yards after. 
Words like ‘yonder’, names like ‘Ella Fitzgerald’
Are thought-written on the wall.
A dog sniffs its possession.
I can read ‘Mansion’ on the ruins.

The way time wipes its hands
on the back of my jeans
wind sips away all the moisture
but a neurotic stink remains. 

 

 

 

Kushal Poddar
Picture Nick Victor

 

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SAUSAGE LIFE 262

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor

Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column which makes its own bed then persuades someone else to lie in it

READER: Just remind me, you still don’t believe in astrology do you?
MYSELF: Absolutely correct. Along with fairies, God and David Icke.
READER: So you probably haven’t heard about the sad passing of Mystic Meg, the all-seeing Sun psychic who failed to predict the demise of the News of the World?
MYSELF: My scepticism has so far not affected the output of my radio, nor the avalanche of garbage coming out of social media, so I have indeed heard the devastating news. But of course it can’t have come as a surprise to her.
READER: That, if I may say so, is a typical reaction. You’re a Virgo if I’m not mistaken and prone to mistrust, joylessness and despondency?
MYSELF: As a Saggitarius with Spleen rising, I refute your accusation. So much so that I have commissioned Her Mysticness to write the astrological predictions for the next Sausage Life, from beyond the grave.
READER: Don’t be ridiculous
MYSELF: I won’t if you won’t.

CRICKET NEWS: WOOMERA THRASHING “MORAL VICTORY FOR ENGLAND” CLAIMS BASMATI

The shock innings and 300 runs defeat during the Australian tour by Woomera Consolidated Insurance under 17s XI, was described by England captain Wally Boomerang as “a moral victory” for the national team. Later, during the traditional Woomera Cricket Club Dinner and Drinking Competition where he was giving a speech, he set out the reasons why: 
“It was like a battlefield out there. The Woomera bowlers threw the ball really hard, making it difficult for our batsmen to hit. Sidebottom (H) got one on the arm at one point, which stung quite badly. The dressing rooms were damp, which made our pads heavier, also the benches near the boundary had been recently painted which made some of the lads feel a bit sick, especially after the over-chilled lager they gave us at tea, instead of tea. Our wicket keeper Taki Wakajawaka got an ice cream headache and missed several easy catches as a result”

SWISH SWOOSH

“The bats were narrower than we are used to in England, and some of their players deliberately stood in places where they could catch the ball when we did manage to hit it. The Woomera first slip, Bruce Wallagooner made personal remarks to our batsmen which cannot be repeated in a family paper, but I would like to reassure fans by putting the record straight. None of the lads is openly gay, or would do anything inappropriate with any kind of marsupial, let alone the one specified by Wallagooner.”

MATTER OF PRIDE

“Many people have questioned my decision to declare at 19 for 7 on the first day, but for us it was a matter of pride. I shall be handing in my written report to the Aussie Cricket Board tomorrow, when I fully expect the result to be awarded to us on moral grounds.”

WAR IN A BILLABONG
Team Manager Dave Barraboise added: “Some of their bowling would have been more at home in the muddy trenches of Ypres, or the heartless arenas of Ancient Rome quite frankly. The Woomera fast bowler Bruce Hogmanay kept a live budgerigar in his pants, and would terrorise our batsmen by pulling it out and pretending to bite its head off.  As for our sluggish performance, it is worth noting that despite the 90 degree temperatures, the Woomera players presented us with thermal underwear at their welcoming ceremony the day before, and some of the lads felt compelled to wear it out of politeness. That’s why Stokes kept fainting.”

  

COVER-UP HALTS MAYORAL FUNCTION
The scandal that has become known as Gardengate refuses to go away. During a lull in Hastings Mayor Derek Windfarm’s speech to the Upper Dicker branch of the Ancient & Unctious Order of Oriental Buffoons on Thursday, a voice was heard shouting “You can’t sweep this under the carpet!” (a comment thought to allude to a previous scandal referred to as Carpetgate), causing Mayor Windfarm’s wife Wanda to glow with embarrassment.
Simultaneously, several inordinately large lewdly-shaped turnips were hurled at the mayor’s podium to cries of “Show us your veg!”, which was the signal for a great deal of ribald laughter from the assembled Oriental Buffoons. Determining exactly which Oriental Buffoon was responsible for the ill-timed comment proved impossible, since members are required to wear huge inscrutible japanese noh masks to all official functions.
Police took away CCTV camera footage of the  incident for further investigation
ITS A FUR COP
Duty Sergeant Gary Cummerbund of Upper Dicker Constabulary said later: “Make no mistake about it, suggestively shaped vegetables this large don’t grow on trees. We suspect that criminal gangs, possibly of Chinese or Italian or Albanian origin are responsible, although we cannot rule out Al Qu’aeda, the Japanese Mafia or the Yardies this early in the investigation. I appeal to members of the public to be on the alert for any fluctuations in the dimensions or sexual ambivalence of their vegetables, however small”.
“Vigilance” he stressed, “is of the essence, not to mention Mum being the word. Remember, careless talk costs lives.”
LOOSE LIPS
When the subject of Mayor Windfarm’s alleged involvement in the scandal was raised, DS Cummerbund would say only this: “Many factors in this case are not what they seem. Rumours abound, often clothed in a thick fog of theatrical smoke, and surrounded by a maze of distorting mirrors. That the impeccable character of our Lord Mayor and his fragrant wife Wanda should be besmirched in this disgraceful fashion is a matter for the finest legal minds in the country, namely Messrs Shattier Gobb Hadaway & Shayte, the soliciters currently acting for His Worship at this juncture”.
“I would also add” he added, “that neither my own lifetime membership of the Ancient and Unctious Order of Oriental Buffoons, nor the senior position of Grand Imperial Wizard held by Mayor Windfarm, have any bearing whatsoever on the objective and unbiased neutrality of this investigation. It is time we all moved on and put an end to this matter.”
Detective Sergeant Cummerbund is 18 stone 5lbs and his wife runs a Jag.

©guano associated press

 

 

 

 

Sausage Life!

Click image to connect. Alice’s Crazy Moon is an offbeat monthly podcast hosted by Alice Platt (BBC, Soho Radio) with the help of roaming reporter Bird Guano a.k.a Colin Gibson (Comic Strip Presents, Sausage Life). Each episode will centre around a different topic chosen by YOU the listener! The show is eclectic mix of music, facts about the artists and songs and a number of surrealistic and bizarre phone-ins and commercials from Bird Guano. Not forgetting everyones favourite poet, Big Pillow!

NB: IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PAID SUBSCRIPTION TO SPOTIFY, THE SONGS WILL BE OF RESTRICTED LENGTH

https://vimeo.com/user129836501https://vimeo.com/user129836501

 

https://vimeo.com/user129836501

 



SAY GOODBYE TO IRONING MISERY!
When added to your weekly wash, new formula Botoxydol, with Botulinim Toxin A, will guarantee youthful, wrinkle-free clothes.
Take years off your smalls with Botoxydol!
CAUTION
MAY CAUSE SMILEY FACE T-SHIRTS TO LOOK
INSINCERE


https://birdguano2.bandcamp.com/album/sonic-goblin

Vote For Countryside Alliance
by The Hunt Cult. Click for video
https://vimeo.com/501269086

 

 

 

 

 

SPONSORED ADVERTISEMENT
“Sometimes you just need a tool that doesn’t do anything”

 

By Colin Gibson

 

Back Issues

SAUSAGE 159 SAUSAGE 160 SAUSAGE 161 SAUSAGE 162 SAUSAGE 163
SAUSAGE 164 SAUSAGE 165 SAUSAGE 166 SAUSAGE 167 SAUSAGE 168
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Children Of The Sun – Dead Can Dance

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor

We are ancient
As ancient as the sun
We came from the ocean
Once our ancestral home
So that one day
We could all return
To our birthright
The great celestial dome
We are the children of the sun
Our journey’s just begun
Sunflowers in our hair
We are the children of the sun
There is room for everyone
Sunflowers in our hair
Throughout the ages
Of iron, bronze, and stone
We marvelled at the night sky
And what may lie beyond
We burned our frames
To the elemental ones
Made sacrifices
For beauty, peace and love
We are the children of the sun
Our kingdom will come
Sunflowers in our hair
We are the children of the sun
Our carnival’s began
Our songs will fill the air
And you know it’s time
To look for reasons why
Just reach up and touch the sky
To the heavens we will sing
We are the children of the sun
Our journey has begun
Are we older children
Come out at night
And even soulless
Great hunger in their eyes
Unaware of the beauty
That sleeps tonight
And all the queen’s horses
And all the king’s men
Will never put these children back
Together again
Faith, hope, our charities
Breathe slow, our enemies
We are the children of the sun
We are the children of the sun

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The Government Just Took Away YOUR FREEDOM

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor

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WITNESSING

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor

Is it preacherly
to do and say ill
and be well spoken of?
Old Testament Christians,
you enlighten yourselves
with darkness,
you hide yourselves
in nakedness
and find fault with
my future and my fate,
my fortune and my alms.
Why haven’t your mirrors
given you harm?
Character and behavior
are aspects inner and outer
of singular identity.
You post your guards
and fund their arms
while New T
aw,
but in our retreat,
we’re not deserters
but rather warriors
seeking a firmer hold.

 

 

Duane Vorhees

 

 

 

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MIDGES

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Bernard Saint

 

Midges on a summer evening
Meet to share new verse

Perhaps their circle is too esoteric?
‘Mere parasites’ I hear

But their sociable circular buzzing
Is annoying only if you draw too near

‘Man continues making mess and money
But has no wings’ most midges say

‘And we are mankind’s muezzin   –
Time they ceased their dervish dance to duly look within

Or nature will discard them from her kin   –
The truth is dawning as their night is falling

They will whirl about for re-admission
Just as holistic nature shuts her gate

And we shall feast on leavings from their plate’

 

 

Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer

 

 

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Sinking Suella

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by David Erdos


Like a reverse shepherd she stands
Dispelling flocks into darkness 
For there is no light from Suella 
As she seeks to wreak the same spell 

As unpriti Patel, whose monstrous heart 
Made air ugly and so Braverman casts 
Dense reflection across the shallow 
But sin-streaked poisoned well. 

These two women share the same race 
And now we’re all running, hot on the tail 
Not of migrants but possibly reason itself. 
For to me It is not about who has the right 

To whichever land endures trespass, 
Nor is it about shelter and the sharing 
Of earth to stop stealth. Instead it is about 
Decisions, dictates, and the ruination 

Of standards. This is a current time without
Boundaries, starting perhaps with the wall
From which Berlin healed it’s long wound;
A time in which Russia’s iron curtain 

Was lifted and which Vladimir Putin 
Has ruffled across a carpet of blood
As kids fall. And so the question extends 
As it always does with the human: 

What are we to each other 
And in the most basic sense; do we care?
From the Christian concept to the Jews 
House of meeting; from the brotherhoods

Within Islam and the sisterhood of all girls
How can these two women adopt the same 
Bastardy in their bitching and in what 
Climate can any nations flag be unfurled. 

This is an obvious piece. 
There is no sophistication at all 
To its message. It’s lines are short,
Even standard. But beneath the brief 

There’a a sea which has its own rules 
About who it grants passage. You are not
Poseidon Suella. But are you a Canute?
Each wave’s free. Before the brink 

England sinks when such empty hands 
Begin pointing. With these directionless 
Sails and Aunt Sally’s heading the ship

Nemo flees. 

                  

                   

                                              David Erdos 10/3/23

 

 

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RAQUEL

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor
 
She never came to Hyde in person
We had to make do with her deerskin bikini
And running from dinosaurs
One Million years before Jesus
The film, and the poster. She was
Miniaturised in Fantastic Voyage. Stood up
For herself in 100 Rifles, Hannie Caulder
I liked her in Westerns, her shirt unbuttoned
There were questions about her politics
And if she had come to Hyde
There would have been a few of us
Holding up placards about Vietnam
But I’d have kissed her, if she’d asked me
 
 
 
 
Steven Taylor
 
 
 
 
 
facebook.com/StevenTaylorpoetry
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THE POCKET BURN

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by David Erdos

 

 


On Richard Cabut’s Disorderly Magic & Other Disturbances
(Far West Press, 2023)

 

Cabut is a Dickensian Punk, a poet sifting spells in dark gutters,
There the brew which breeds poems of piss and spit, spite and stars
Lay collected in rain through which he stares; a kind of Richard Hell
Trawling Hackney, before venturing to West End for remnants
Of Lydon in London and the empires of dark in lost bars.

This small, burning book, courtesy of Far West Press sees stares
Steaming. With George Ives’ take on justice he tracks
A ‘negative girl’ through the streets. With Bibliomancy as muse,
His poems, as with his prose, persuade fires to re-route
From ruins and make every road along which we stumble

And roam incomplete. Francis Bacon bestows in a Soho doorway.
Angels fall, frying into the sin-soaked pan of the world. ‘Dharma Jack’s’
Ghost starts a trail that Vicious’ Punk primed pose fails to follow.
While, the ‘toothless writer of West Way’ observes how solids states,
Sedimented, start to seep like spit stirring the blood on the tongue

Of the girl who seeks to piss in a pool and sink into this city,
Full of blister slashed magic and the barrage and burn of old beats.
Cabut conjures the past and by implication the future.
He seeks ‘the unalloyed feeling of heavy hymns’ and as he traverses
‘the strange energy of the streets.’ This is the manifesto one finds

When covered and spined the young writer, posed like a mix
Of Breton and Artaud is placed into print by the sage
Who has lived through time’s loss of a more visceral London,
One which Punk painted. A different Ground Zero, grime gained
Before Café Nero, ‘where the moon is made of tears…

..and Shapeshifters and Shoplifters have been immortalized
In Dick’s Age. Which is where we live now. Having papered
Over the cracks with used Kleenex. Snot and spunk staining
The re-birth that was, now still-born. Cabut’s magic revives.
It literally reconfigures. And one can see him wild-eyed

And speeding across the diary of days he has torn.
He is ‘mingling dreams, ‘ while lifting myth’s mask to stare
Harder. He is metamorphosing the message that indulgence
Grants, for escape. As he could clearly tell even then,
That the China shop is the problem, and that the Bull

Raging in it is always the martyr before it rushes
Towards fate’s red cape. Blood appears on bed-sheets.
The internet soon malfunctions. ‘Delicate malice’
Challenges ‘fragmented discourse.’ Sentences splice.
Word as rush blood and bolster. Verbs alone carry meaning.

As adjective addicts eagerly chase each wild horse.
Cabut’s is a new poetry. It is Trocchi and Thomas Stearns’
Try at Cockney. But in this warped wasteland, energy
Trumps elegy. Mishima throbs. The Aylesbury Estate begins
Aching. These pocket-sized burns are a bible that would turn

White City black easily. There is a new mould on Mars
That gives it the same sheen as Mitcham. Watch the shade
Of Rimbaud run riot across each of our ruined zones.
For these conjurings blaze. The size of the book is important.
At the span of a hand you can hold it as a shield which shapes

Those alone. ‘Bright sad stars’ fall. ‘Feelings Get Bleached Out.’
And the music that fuels Richard’s rhythms is play-listed for us,
Thankfully. A series of girls pass and merge, while retaining
The hold they had on him. His youthful flush of hair and bright
Beauty attracting them and us sets love free. For as a laureate

Of the dark, Cabut contains stars. The spit glistens.
If God is in his typewriter, or in that of any who write
He can see – angels and ache and past Polish tempests.
There is dead brother Faustin and the trail of a brass band
Up the stairs. There is ‘the impossibility of return’ in this

And in all our trespasses. And yet, dear dark Dick as Detective
Is hot on the trail of the flare which burning backgrounds begat;
His poems cinema them all into being. Like Crowley’s wisps
Of sex-mist and wonder Richard can rouse spirit-guides.
Which is what this book bares. It is a travel text for those tested

By the inadequacies of the present and by what it continually
Fails to provide; perhaps the star that Sid sought. Or the one
Which pin-pointed Jesus for Judas. In this book, what the truth is
Remixes ghost-music with Cabut’s care and his heart.
For relatives lost, as Danuta’s handbag lays open.

Dunstable is blown towards London courtesy of ‘The Old Windmill
In Amsterdam.’ That old song steers and soothes. The heat
Of hurt is soon Savlon-ed.  The slap of lubricant lowers the thrust
And trust love can span. And yet the cold gathers fast,
Richard regards it now as a mirror. ‘The assemblage of memory’ 

Mars him, but he can toast it too, with wit’s cup.
He watches a lost river wind ‘flooding the bank of a future
Which might have been.’ Snow is falling. He writes his world,
And yours also, and then he ‘went quickly down the path,
Pulling my collar up.’ Snow can burn, too. Cold bites.

Love attacks us. But as we spume into gutters.
There is also the life-blood from which each new age
Can now sup. Place Cabut’s face in your hand. And then
In your pocket. What the Far West delivers is a delicious dog
Who barks at you and for you, too:  Art’s hot pup.

 

 

                                      David Erdos 21/2/23

 

 

https://www.farwestpress.com/far-west-books/p/disorderly-magic

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Marmaduke and I

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor

…………


            (“I remembered also the pearl for which I was sent down into Egypt…”)

            It was only the first night, yes, the very first.
            You must understand that I only took the job because of the hours. I sleep. I mean, I sleep a great deal – during the day, because for whatever reason I can’t sleep at night.
            Actually, I have a good idea what the reason is. I’m a fugitive – from myself. Yes: from myself. Oh, that sounds so melodramatic. However, it’s why I can’t sleep at night. How do I sleep during the day, then? I don’t have explanations for everything.
            So, a nightwatchman’s position seemed a solution to my inability to work during the day, although I admit I wasn’t all that keen on the place: an animal laboratory. Beggars can’t be choosers, I told myself. I like animals, as it happens. Ah well, I told myself; ah well.
            I entered the laboratory and started to turn the lights on. I hadn’t even finished doing so when I heard a little voice call out:  ‘In these shadows you look surprisingly like one of my brothers! He was much smaller, of course.’
            It was a voice not just faint, or quiet, but also high-pitched. A child’s, perhaps… or so I thought.
            ‘Where are you?’ I called out. I couldn’t see anyone, although I’d turned all the lights on now.
            ‘Over here, my brother… my almost brother! At the back, and to the left.’
            I went there. There were only cages. Nothing else.
            And then the voice came again… it came from one of the cages.
            Only one cage was occupied… and it was occupied by a mouse.
            ‘Hello, my brother!’ exclaimed the mouse, its front paws on the uppermost bars so that it was standing.
            ‘I must have fallen asleep somehow! A mouse can’t be talking to me! It’s a dream, right?’
            ‘You’re asking a mouse?’
            ‘That does seem a little silly, doesn’t it?’
            ‘All right, as this is your dream, why don’t you describe what’s going on for me?’
            ‘Well, I’ve come to work, I have my work clothes on, although my work clothes aren’t really any different from what I normally wear… T shirt, jeans, an old jacket, socks and boots. I have a bag with a box of snacks and a bottle of mineral water…’
            ‘Any dark chocolate?’
            ‘Yes, as a matter of fact…’
            ‘Yum!’
            ‘…and a cheese sandwich.’
            ‘You eat the sandwich, but give me the chocolate. I need all my strength for what we’re going to do.’
            ‘Which is what, pray tell?’
            ‘We’re getting out of here!’
            ‘And why should I help you do that? I’ll lose my job, you know, and I’ve only just started.’
            ‘You’re my brother! You really look like him… only a lot bigger, of course.’
            ‘No one’s ever told me I look like a mouse before.’
            ‘There’s a first time for everything. Take it as a compliment!’
            ‘OK, but before we go any further, how on earth do you speak English?’
            ‘You think I should be speaking Japanese?’
            ‘No, I mean how are you speaking at all?’
            ‘I picked it up from watching TV and listening to the radio. Whenever a TV or radio was on in any home I stayed in, I’d listen and learn. It’s amazing what you can pick up that way.’
            ‘My head’s spinning! Let’s change the subject: why do you want to get out of here?’
            ‘Would you like to be stuck in a little cage? Would you like to be experimented on? They put horrible drops into our eyes that hurt dreadfully… they even inject cancerous cells into us… and, O, so much else! And all as experiments! You probably write experimental poetry… well, these are real experiments, and they’re painful, and they kill!’
            ‘How did you know I’ve written experimental poetry? And how do you even know about such things?’
            ‘Ah, a little mouse told me. No, come on, I was guessing: you look like you’d be the sort who’d write that stuff, and as for the rest, well, I listen to the radio and watch TV, as I told you. Ian McMillan’s my favourite for presenting what you call ‘poetry’. But then I’m a mouse, remember.’
            ‘I suppose it’s for a good cause, the experiments, I mean. Not experimental poetry… well, not necessarily, anyway.’
            ‘If you believe that, you’ll believe anything: you’ll be telling me next that there isn’t a God.’
            ‘Is there a God?’
            ‘Of course there is!’
            ‘But if you say there isn’t a God, is that a belief? Or simply a denial of belief?’
            ‘For an almost brother of mine, you’re not terribly bright. I don’t say that unkindly, needless to say. Of course it’s a belief – but an impoverished one!’
            ‘I can’t believe you really learned to speak English from listening to the radio and watching TV.’
            ‘Believe whatever you like. By the way, what do you plan to do when you grow up?’
            ‘Hey! I’m thirty-six, you know… Besides, aren’t you quoting from a film?’
            ‘And so, what do you want to do?’
            ‘What cheek! Besides writing experimental poetry, I have some ideas for short stories… For example, ‘Ghost of a Chance’, which is about how a chance event releases a ghost into the living world…’
            ‘Uh huh.’
            ‘Then there’s ‘The Loneliest Wombat’. It’s for children. I can even recite the beginning: “Wanda lived alone. She rarely left whichever hole she currently resided in, apart from when looking for food. She had no friends. Or rather, none that she saw any more.”’
            ‘You’ve memorised that! Bravo! But is that all there is of it?’
            ‘So far!’
            ‘As soon as you entered the room, I had you pegged as a loner…’
            ‘Well, yes…’
            ‘And as a loser!’
            ‘Hey, do you want me to help you or not?’
            ‘Would it help matters if I said you seemed like a highly successful person?’
            ‘I don’t suppose so.’ I sighed. I knew the inevitable was going to happen. ‘After I’ve picked the lock on your cage…’
            ‘You can pick locks?’
            ‘I’ve done a few more things in my life than write experimental poetry and work as a nightwatchman. So, after I’ve picked the lock and released you…’
            ‘If you want to know where this mouse is going next, that depends on you, doesn’t it?’
            ‘I’ll lose my job.’
            ‘So?’
            ‘What will I do then?’
            The mouse looked at him steadily.
            ‘We’ll go off together. We’ll have adventures… and fun. My name is Marmaduke, by the way.’
            ‘I… I… I…!’
            ‘Couldn’t you leave a little note saying, “We did this, not your nightwatchman”, and sign it ‘The Animal Liberation Front’?’
            ‘Yeah, but what about me? Why didn’t I stop them?’
            ‘There were too many of them. OK, let’s add a PS: “There were fifty of us. And we’ve taken your nightwatchman hostage. Expect a ransom note in a year or two.”’
            ‘It beggars belief, but I can’t think of anything better, due to my head swimming!’
            ‘Write your note, and let’s get out of here!’ exclaimed Marmaduke.
            We went back to my little flat, my rather humble… no, OK, squalid little flat in South London. But we knew we couldn’t stay there long.
            Marmaduke was not impressed by my… humble place. For example, he inspected the cupboards in the kitchen. ‘Cans, cans… rows of cans… canned soup, canned meat, canned tomatoes, canned fish… cans!’
            And then I remembered my former philosophy tutor, Gwen. She’d recently written to say that her husband Andrew had died. And she’d said I was welcome to come and stay any time I liked.
            She was in Bridport. Which is in Dorset.
            So Marmaduke and I took the Weymouth bus. ‘How much for one, to Bridport?’ I asked the conductor.
            ‘Two, actually’, said Marmaduke, who was in my coat pocket.
            ‘Make up your mind, son – for one or two? And why the silly voice?’ the conductor said peevishly.
            ‘Just one’.
            The journey seemed to take forever, although altogether it can’t have been more than three hours, including a fairly long wait somewhere… I was too out of it to notice where.
            And when we reached Bridport, we had to get a taxi from the town centre.
            I’d become a little apprehensive. I mean, despite our recent correspondence, I hadn’t actually seen Gwen in quite some years.
            I rang the doorbell. And the door opened.
            Gwen was much as I remembered, only older… tall, slim, stylish… long hair, now grey… good looking… so good looking, I’d always thought… a small cigar in her hand.
            ‘Hello, Gwen’, Marmaduke said. ‘We’re home.’
            ‘Ah, I’ve been dreaming about you both! And now you’re here.’
            We were talking over drinks a little later, Gwen with red wine, me with white, and Marmaduke with water.
            ‘Time and eternity are not opposites, at least in the sense of being within the same system and on the same plane’, said Marmaduke. ‘Space and infinity can be seen in the same way.’
            ‘That’s.. ah, interesting’, said Gwen.
            ‘You didn’t get that from watching TV!’ I said.
            ‘Yes.’
            ‘OK, who said that?’
            ‘No idea. I was eating some dark chocolate I’d rescued from a mouse trap, so I missed the opening credits. And then I was… well, I’d rather draw a veil over this, but it involved the missus. That’s how I missed the closing credits.’
            But after going to bed, and after a long sleep, I woke… woke to find Gwen’s bungalow in ruins, and Gwen gone, and Marmaduke nowhere to be found. Were they ghosts? Am I haunted? A cold wind blew through the ruins, and dust and cobwebs were everywhere. A beam collapsed, and then another.
            No. I hadn’t really woken at all.
            It was a dream… and perhaps…  a dream of a film I’d once seen?
            And now I really woke.
            ‘Dear me, you have slept a long time!’ said Gwen. ‘It’s lunch time now.’
            ‘And I have a special treat’, said Marmaduke. ‘Dark chocolate! Well… courtesy of Gwen.’
            Oh God, I must be still dreaming, I thought.
            I pinched myself.
            Gwen and Marmaduke were still there.
            Ah well, I thought, it could be a lot worse… in fact, it couldn’t really be better.
            Home. I was home.
            ‘You know, I think I’ll write about our adventures together.’
            ‘What will you call it?’
            ‘How about “The Mouse that Soared”?’
            ‘Ha! Good – but I have an improvement for you.’
            ‘Yes?’
            ‘ “That Mouse Who Soared”.’
            ‘Done.’
            ‘No, I have an improvement as well. Call it “The Mouse and His Half-Brother Who Soared’”, said Gwen.
            ‘So be it!’
            But I didn’t. Because Gwen had another idea:
            ‘No, I think you should call it “Marmaduke and I”.’
            And so I have.

 

 

© David Miller 2023

 

 

 

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The Snails of Neruda

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor

On viewing the shell collection of Pablo Neruda

Within the wounds of the sea, 
the hardly negligible pain
in the breath of her infinite acceptance,
her secret joy persists
 in these little houses of snails, the least of her hidden
consignments where the highest
 skills of her pure delight parade
 solely to the eyes of fishes
 and the shape-shifting octopus.
And when the soft life within withers
or is sucked out for food 
as we all must someday feed the other
and what remains is only the poem
that life has inscribed on its house
the shell in its precise cacophony
 that the wordless symphony of the sea
deputizes to the shore where the poet 
in heartbroken love again as always
stoops to collect another talisman
to decode the tangle of his soul 
another spiraled and patterned affirmation
from those upheaving currents 
the hidden depths upon which 
his very life depends.

 

 

David Fetcho
 
 

 

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         Instant         

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor

Do I mutter looking down, passing
opposite direction on the sidewalk?
You might help me up, fallen. Might
knock me down, gotten up—a hint,
last week the stray bullet punched
a daylight instant in a young woman’s
heart. That tragedy shrinks
my ambitions? An anvil dropped
on my bunched and squirming
piglet dreams? Maple, cherry,
or poplar hardwoods against this
soft-headedness, their leafy
cell work prettier than gray matter
stuffed under a haircut. Maybe
below the city on a train pushes against
shafts of ancient, stinking atmosphere
she imagined fresh life with trees other
air pushes, in shade minnowing around.

 

 

George Shelton

 

 

 

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New Year’s Eve

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor

New Year’s Eve
And the man who was You Boy
Walks straight backed steady
Out of the pub well before Midnight
So he’s spared the Auld Lang Syne,
Has only one thing in mind:
To go back
So he walks between lopsided gateposts

Ignores a DUE FOR DEMOLITION sign,
Scans the moonlit schoolyard,
Stoops
Selecting a stone
Then it’s arm back
Take a run up
Throw stoop throw again again again

And pane after pane after pain
Shatters.

 

 

Kevin Patrick McCann
Bruegel El Viejo,detail by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

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The END of the Line (revisited)

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Heidi Stephenson




The city of London was a Paradise once:
Green Park, Forest Hill, Wood Lane, Bushey…
Where animals lived in harmony with nature:
Heron Quays, Barkingside, Goldhawk Road, Hendon…
And humans lacked the tools for mass destruction.

Their numbers thrived; with habitat and food for all:
Buckhurst Hill, Blackhorse Road, Lambeth North, Frognall…
And homo “sapiens sapiens” looked on in wonder and awe:
Hornchurch, Angel! Isle of Dogs, Bayswater…
Paying tribute to fellow beings with place names.

But fascination soon turned to exploitation:
Shepherd’s Bush, Chalk Farm, Snaresbrook, Stockwell…
And man was bent on killing his animal brother:
Kilburn Park, Battersea, Bow Road, Hatch End…
Making money from his flesh and blood.

Capitalism killed off all Compassion:
Mansion House, Highgate, Elephant and Castle, Bank….
He abused ‘till there was no tomorrow:
Oxford Circus, Bond Street, Burnt Oak, Harrow…
While the heavens despaired over man’s Free Will.

London was soon emptied of her creatures:
Queensway, Kingsway, East Ham, West Ham…
As Church and State betrayed earth and creature…for Transcendentalism:
Parson’s Green, Canons Park, Abbey Road, Blackfriars…
And concrete, material ‘values,’ were preached and flourished.

Until all that remained was a distant green memory:
Oakwood, Elm Park, Greenford, Heathrow…
In a deathly, nether world, gone underground:
Imperial Wharf, Chancery Lane, Manor House, Morden.
Hurtling… towards the End of The Line

 

 

Heidi Stephenson
Illustration: Claire Palmer

 

This poem was first published on International Times, 9 October, 2014.

The End of the Line

 

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OM NAMAH SHIVAY!

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor

Heroism with machoism,
Yet believer of pacifism,
Lord Shiva in Hinduism,
Known for Your powerful magnetism,
Your angry behaviourism,
Expressed in Tandavism,
Your dance specialism,
Drank poison to protect each and every organism.
And destroyed the demonism.

Shred of tiger skin as a dress code,
Ash as main ornamentation,
Toxin in throat,
Ganga in matted hair,
Lord of lordships,
Creator of meditation,
Trident as weapon,
Pellet drum as an instrument,
Third eye produces extra sense,
Destroyer of evil,
Creator of the creation,
Innocence in character.
Resides in the mount of Kailash,
Father of devotees.
The oldest monk,
Seeing everything with eyes closed,
The unconditional lover,
Recluse of all time,
Weed as relaxation,
Crossed legs for concentration,
While churning of sea,
Distributed Amrit to all,
Drunk Halahal,
Kept in throat,
Screamed in pain,
King of paradise,
Pastime at crematorium,
Lord of spirits,
Divine of soul,
The source of power,
The power of devotees,
The sacred sound
Who exists but not
Father of sense,
First of mantras
“OM NAMAH SHIVAY”.

Crescent Moon and the Ganga,
With serpent around your neck,
Your three eyes make,
Your appearance an exceptional.
Meditative and yogic mannerism,
Innocence with asceticism.
The prayers of devotees with full devotional,
Are answered with mysticism.
My poeticism
For Lord Shiva
The most auspicious dynamism.

 

 

 

 

Bio:- Monalisa Parida is a post graduate student of English literature from India, Odisha and a prolific poetess. She is very active in social media platforms and her poems have also been translated into different languages and publish in various e-journals.
She has got 100 international award for writing poetry. Her poems have been publishing international e-journals “New York parrot”, “The Writers Club” (USA), “Suriyadoya literary foundation”, “kabita Minar”, “Indian Periodical” (India) and “Offline Thinker “, “The Gorkha Times “ ( Nepal), “The Light House”(Portugal), “Bharatvision”(Romania), “International cultural forum for humanity and creativity”(Aleppo, Syria), “Atunispoetry.com”(Singapore) etc. And also published in various newspapers like “The Punjabi Writer Weekly(USA)”, “News Kashmir (J&K, India)”, Republic of Sungurlu (Turkey)” etc.
One of her poem published an American anthology named “The Literary Parrot Series-1 and series-2 respectively (New York, USA)”. Her poems have been translated in various languages like Hindi, Bengali, Turkish, Persian, Romanian etc. And she is the author of the book “Search For Serenity”, “My Favourite Grammar”, “Paradigm”, “Beyond Gorgeous”.

 

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Extracts from The Unspeakable by Joseph Suart

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor



An essay written to support Kate Walters’ solo exhibition The Unspeakable at Studio KIND in Braunton North Devon, February 2023.

The Greek word, ‘Kore’, derives from a root meaning ‘vital force’ and ‘refers to the principle that makes plants and animals grow’ (Agamben & Ferrando 2010 p 6). The Kore is any untethered girl or woman whose sexuality may be yet budding or budding again and again. It is used to refer as much to any unmarried woman who may be sexually active as to one who has not yet awoken to her sexual life. It is also used in reference to those who are old yet still powerful, ‘children with white hair’ such as the Erinyes.

We have here the story, and the images, of a form of human life that ‘does not allow itself to be “spoken” in so much as it cannot be defined by age, family, sexual identity or social role’ (Agamben & Ferrando 2010 p7). The story was communicated in language only in so much as it is heard as a poem sung from the poetic realm.

The poetic realm is imaginal and it speaks directly from the body to the body. But what if Persephone, daughter of the goddess of fecundity, was overwhelmed by her own burgeoning exuberance and sexuality as it pushed up from inside her like an iris budding in the morning? Pushing up and calling towards the Earth around her with the Sea-breeze and the Sun-warmth. The warming Earth, and the Sun and the Sea, are calling back and drawing the budding upwards and upwards.

She is with friends on the cliffs in the warm Spring sunshine, a gentle sea breeze is ruffling the down on their arms, playing around their ears and their knees as they laugh and bend to smell the flowers, picking them in abundance. It is in delight that she is drawn into the face of the flower, kissed into kissing and infiltrated by that irresistible scent; it tickles her nose and slips itself into her, sending a frisson down through her body and out over her skin, spreading and awakening her. What can this be that is stealing over and through her as never before? She doesn’t know what is happening and she can’t stop. Everything is different: the way it looks, the way it feels, the way she feels. Everything is new. Again. Each time she opens her eyes and feels her skin respond. And she is aching for more of it but doesn’t know what it is. This is like it is the very first time. She puts the pomegranate seed in her mouth and nuzzles its sharp flavour with her tongue till it sweetens and creeps down her throat. She is not the one she was before. Everything is gone. No one saw it happen and no one knows where she is. She has disappeared.

And with that sexually creative sensuality comes the silent knowledge of death, unnoticed until too late. Unavoidable. Necessary. Is Trauma what happens when a god takes possession of us without our consent?

‘With Death as my advisor’: prayer child arising from a falling vulva with a contained challenge of aliveness and tension in the line and expression

Trauma: not only the result of annihilatory treatment in the Death Camps.

Trauma: also the silent and unnoticed introduction of death, slipping in where it was least expected and in the very moment when we are opening our budding selves up to the world. The butterfly.

Even if predicted, the unknown event lies in wait until long after it can no longer be avoided.

Trauma: unspeakable.

In the story of Wolf Alice a young girl is found in the woods by the nuns and rescued back to their convent. She is filthy and goes on all fours and huddles growling in the corner snarling at them. She doesn’t hear words of love, and never has, but she has felt the tongue of love from her wolf-mother. Though named by Wolf Alice, is she not also vitalised by Kore and so Persephone by another name? Is she not ‘the bud of flesh in the kind lion’s mouth’ (A. Carter 1979)? Untameable, she is given to the Duke who feeds on the dead, exhuming recent graves in the local churchyard at night, lurching off with a recent-bride’s torso slung over his shoulder. Death is all around her and she is unafraid. She watches the moon waxing to full and is awoken by the bleeding between her legs. The Duke of Death is ambushed and shot. And Wolf Alice, newly emerging into herself under the gentle caress of her own care, is able to share that loving touch with him. Her loving tongue soothes him as he struggles to survive the wounds of murderous intent inflicted by the humans ambushing him from the Church.

In The Remnants of Auschwitz Agamben delineates that which eludes being captured by words: the trauma of annihilation. In The Unspeakable Girl Agamben’s exploration of the Eleusinian Mystery rites appears to present an alternative understanding of Persephone’s trauma as being one that leads to an experience of ecstatic re-birth. The essence of this experience refuses colonisation or interpretation, is not restricted to an elite or retained for the select, but is open to all. It cannot be transmitted or described; it can only be experienced in the body. The Kore, the young girl, the essence of vital life, is re-born from the trauma. This is Wolf Alice. This is also Little Kate being brought back to an enlivened beingness through the tiny ink drawings and the paintings.

The paintings in this exhibition of the Unspeakable are like still-shot images from a renaissance of life out of the trauma of the once lost. They pulse with life caught momentarily in an eternal present, balanced between an impossibly uncertain past and a tremulously reached-for future. In Kate Walters’ work presented in this exhibition we see these images being nursed into being out of the inchoate uncertainties of her own traumatic experience which is both hers and that of all of us who, confronted with the shock of the not-understood, continue struggling towards awareness, continue pushing and being pulled towards the sun.

As we can see in the texture and gesture of line, colour and medium, embodiment of ink or oil pigment, these moments of suspension are both powerful and fragile, constantly eluding us and on the point of disappearing. 

Our experience in that ‘semantic void’ is to witness and to have testimony of that moment impressed upon us primarily in, not through, our body’s senses. These works are themselves unspeakable because they have to be understood in the moment of being that is held in the body. They are also moments in which seeing the Medusa becomes revelatory rather than deathly.

Little Kate, as she comes into view through the ink spilling itself over the typed words of little books, brings with her something from her past and ours that gets reworked in the very act of her formation and this process of vitalization, of renaissance, appears almost epiphanic. It is for this that Little Kate is also Kore, Persephone, kissing the flower thrusting into her whole face, overwhelmed by her own sex and so vulnerable to being captured and exploited by the male gaze of patriarchal power and having to find an Eleusinian way to resist.

Agamben writes with reference to Averroes (aka Ibn Rushd) that ‘imagination delineates a space in which we are not yet thinking, in which thought becomes possible through an impossibility to think’ (Agamben 2007 p55-6), and that thinking is made possible by uniting (copulating) with the phantasms/images of imagination and memory, ‘which are the ultimate constituents of the human and the only avenues to its possible rescue’ (Agamben 2007 p56).

The image suspended and charged with time requires an experiential union within the poetic and imaginal body of the artist and thereafter of the witness. This is the place where meaning comes into being, where soul is made and where psychic reality is enabled to emerge. The psychic reality of who each one of us experiences ourselves to be, the collective psychic reality of our daily cultural experience, is formed by this unfolding process.

(Edited by Kate Walters March 2023)

Bibliography
     ‘Agamben & Ferrando 2010’ refers to:
Giorgio Agamben & Monica Ferrando The Unspeakable Girl, translated by Leland de la Durantaye & Annie Julia Wyman. Seagull Books 2014 (ISBN 978 0 8574 2 083 1)
     A Carter 1979 refers to:
Angela Carter The Bloody Chamber. Vintage 2006 (ISBN 9780099588115) (quote is from p. 146)
     The Remnants of Auschwitz refers to:
Giorgio Agamben Remnants of Auschwitz Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Zone Books 2002 (ISBN 978 1 890951 17 7)
     Agamben 2007 refers to:
Giorgio Agamben Nymphs Translated by Amand Minervini. Seagull Books 2013 (ISBN 978 0 8574 2 094 7)

The Unspeakable by Kate Walters
25th February – 17th March 2023


Open Wednesdays to Saturdays 12:30-17:30
Free entry
 
 
‘Trauma is the necessary encounter with an unavoidable catastrophe.’
      – Jesse Selkin
 
Kate Walters’ exhibition of watercolours and oil paintings, accompanied by sketchbooks and poetry, gather together works from the past twenty years as she has moved closer to, and away from, traumatic events in her life.
 
Kate has recently begun to focus on her inner child, supplying her with a number of sketchbooks in which she can explore, as Little Kate, many partially remembered events, and the pathways to healing that creativity and attention can bestow. These paintings explore the important roles of eros, bodily knowing, dreaming, animal protectors and shamanic knowing in penetrating the areas revealed by awareness brought through trauma.

For more information head to www.katewalters.co.uk

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Night Tripper

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor

This show features tracks by

Quicksilver Messenger Service, Country Joe and the FIsh, Screamin j hawkins, Jimi Hendrix EXP, Willie Nelson and more.

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Unsung Hero: Phil Bayliss (1951-2023)

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor

 

A brief celebration from his friend Alan Dearling

Early morning, by email, Phil contacted me about a music review we were working together on. He then went out for his customary morning run on a Wednesday a few weeks ago. Returned home, had a heart attack, was placed in an induced coma. His life-support was turned off the following weekend. He was an organ donor. Vikki, Phil’s wife told me: “The wonderful thing that has come out of it, is that Phil has been able to donate his kidneys and liver to help save the lives of three others. Various medical teams were on hand around the country to receive the organs and the patients were in theatre waiting.”  I later heard that his eyes were also donated to new recipients.

I met Phil first as one of the original co-organisers of The Grizzly, an inspirational and marginally bonkers all-terrain race which has become one of the most over-subscribed long-distance running events in the UK. From the late 1980s he quickly became a close friend. We holidayed together, went to gigs and festivals (and did our share of after-exercise pints), and ran and walked many hundreds, indeed, thousands of miles together. But he also acted as my copy-editor and inspirational supporter and colleague. He worked with me on social policy books, my two novels and books about festivals, new Travellers, environmental projects and cultural diversity in Africa, Turkey and Australia. And for over ten years Phil assisted me with my music and arts articles and reviews for ‘Gonzo’ magazine (www.gonzoweekly.com) and more recently for ‘International Times’ (www.internationaltimes.it). For me and these magazines he was one hell of an ‘unsung hero’. I’m missing dreadfully his cheerful companionship, encouragement and creative criticism, interspersed with deviations into reggae and blues music, books, films and other interests such as his visits to the subversive ‘Dismaland’ (partly curated by Banksy and the KLF) and the on-land oil rig/play park. These are his pics.

Like myself, Phil had a number of ‘lives’. He had been a journalist, a community education teacher and adult educator, photography tutor, gained a doctorate, and latterly was an innovator in training for prison educators based from Plymouth University. For many, he was lifelong sports-person, helping in organising, running, swimming and cycling events. He was motivated to strive to be the best he could be, and trained hard in swimming and cycling to achieve his ambitions to participate in a number of Iron Man challenges around the world. He particularly enjoyed our shared adventures as part of the Legbenders, a team set up to take part in the HOTBOT challenge along the UK’s South-West Coast Path, the start was in Sidmouth and the finish at East Portlemouth on the Kingsbridge Estuary (about 74miles).

Runners took turns to run/jog/walk pre-set ‘sections’ of the HOTBOT route and had to follow a route map. It included ferries across the Exe, and the other team members had to travel in their own vehicle to meet up with the next leg-weary runner.

The relay team and organisers were from Cambridge University and were very much the ‘favourites’. We’d have bet on them. But, and it was a big BUT, we were very experienced in running the South-West Coast Path.

It was a monumental challenge and Garry was almost completely zonked by the end. I think he’d run about 50 miles or more on some really arduous ‘leg-benders’!

The LEGBENDERS were victorious. Cream teas and beers and more were much enjoyed by all.

Alan, Garry, Phil and Dave – the original Legbenders!

 

But most of all he was a proper ‘mate’.

Phil’s was woodland burial. It was real celebration of Phil’s myriad, multi-faceted ‘lives’. Father, husband, grandparent, a prodigious long-distance runner. Essentially he was kind, generous and positive.

Down in Seaton, Devon, over 200 attended at the grave for woodland burial and after at a community centre for the eulogy. I was one of the pall-bearers of different heights. Small at front, me at back. Bit scary across an uneven field. But a privilege.

A well thought-out and executed event. It  even included two a cappella singers, recorded music in the woodland and original poems.

Luv ‘n respect to Phil, Vikki, his family and many friends.

 

Dave, Alan and Phil in Happy Leg-bending times

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In The Chapel In The Moonlight

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor

‘Till the organ turns to rust’

In the chapel in the moonlight
The organ turns to rust
And snowy hoots resound.
Its pipes spill faith, betray trust,
Bleed wind from blinking, steely eyes;
Its stops no longer start,
The leaking nave invites the skies…

In the chapel in the moonlight
When the organ turns to rust
Unhandled manuals are wrenched apart:
All stays unexplained a priori,
Resurgam over the lintel lies
And pro tem is never forever
In such dispirited damp…

In the chapel in the moonlight
As the organ turns to rust
A hologrammed celebrant
Depresses keys unlocking an unidentifiable tune –
Neither ancient nor modern
It whimpers and meanders
Between the sodden graves…

To the chapel in the moonlight
While nesting nightjars peek
Canters an errant knight hobo,
Heart threadbare on his sleeve.
Knocking back a stirrup cup,
He mutters a hollow mantra
To glimpse his absent angel,
Diaphanous talismanic lacuna.

Then he knew the time had come as it surely must
For ash to propagate to ashes and roses choke in dust
And he cradled the organ as it turned to rust…

 

 

 

Julian Isaacs
Image  Nick Victor

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A Pre-emptive Note on Sensitivity

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor

 

With all the furore about Bowdlerisation of children’s classics, it feels important to check my memories on the shelf marked Best Left Unopened; to crack those colonial spines, passed down from my mother’s mother, and wake the shamed dead in order to set them straight. But there aren’t any words except dedications from aunts and uncles born out of cotton dust and coal smoke, marking birthdays, Christmases, and the rush of storm clouds across burgeoning cities; and every page is a map to where the pavements end, to where ships freight inexplicable machines, and to the point at which children test their homemade wings against an insouciant sky. Once upon a time, my grandmother found language wrapped in a blue silk ribbon. Once upon a time, my mother painted small puppets between stiff embossed covers. Once upon a time, I thumbed these pages like an almanac charting the movements of stars, tides, and night cars crossing the bridge between floating islands glimpsed through mist. There’s a photo slipped between pages and, though I don’t know who all these smiling people are, I know they’re mine. When I’m gone, should anyone care, you can change all the words you like: just keep the full stops, the clouds, and these smiling strangers.

 

 

Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor

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Can’t Get There From Here

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor

Alistair Fitchett on ‘The Tastemaker’ by Tony King. Published by Faber and Faber.

Do you ever stand in your younger self’s shoes, glance into the future and wonder how on earth you got there from here? Tony King does this in ‘The Tastemaker’, wondering at the end of the book how his young self in Eastbourne, hearing ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ for the first time, could possibly believe the way in which the/his future was about to unfurl. A life spent living the rock’n’roll dream, yet doing so essentially under the radar. A life lived with the likes of Elton John, The Rolling Stones and John Lennon. Fairy tales are more believable.

To say that ‘The Tastemaker’ is a memoir is something of a red herring, for really it is a scattershot mix of moments clipped from the dipping wings of memory; anecdotes stitched together into some semblance of chronological narrative form. To say that it barely hangs together as a book is a criticism only in so much as one gets the distinct feeling that the written word is by far the least effective medium for Tony King to be sharing these escapades and observations. They read like short bursts of excited, barely connected slippages of time. You can almost hear the gaps between the paragraphs being filled with King taking a moment before saying “and then there was the time when…” or “did I ever tell you about…” and off again in a breathless charge into the sequinned spangle of the past. There is a definite sense that ‘The Tastemaker’ would be best experienced as a series of meetings in an exclusive club where the clientele are the holograms or 22nd Century avatars of the “legends and geniuses of rock music” whose life King has shared. A club where you might be thrilled beyond belief to have been invited to but in which, after a little while, you are not entirely certain you would like to stay for the long haul.

I have long had a problem with the notion of ‘genius’. It seems to me that not only is it often so easily bandied about as to be meaningless, but it also diminishes the very qualities that make individuals successful. Leaving aside the complexities of defining ‘success’, it strikes me that the term ‘genius’ infers some ineffable natural quality that in turn effectively masks the requirement for hard work to turn that quality into something worthwhile. The mediation of ‘geniuses’ perpetuates this mythology, but that is part of the role of the Entertainment Industry after all. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. The man who, in many instances throughout the 1960s and certainly the 1970s, was Tony King. Working as hard as the artists he was promoting and having almost as much of a ball whilst doing so. Perhaps more so, since he would be all but invisible outside of the rarified circles he mixed in. ‘Celebrity’ must be a curse in many respects, but such is the price.

‘The Tastemaker’, however, is hardly a book to fully lift the curtain of Oz and reveal the grubby inner workings. Such an action would surely be entirely alien to Tony King, a man whose loyalty and common courtesy emanate graciously from the pages just as effectively as does his devotion to the music he felt driven to worship and serve. There are far too many extraordinary anecdotes in the book to single out any for particular note but all of them reverberate gloriously with a warmth and presence that encapsulates the era in which they take place. Historical details contextualise everything in a marvellous flickery haze, like watching home movies in a living room clouded by smoke rather than the blockbusters of the time in cavernous cinemas. Or, to put it in musical terms, like having Elton John perform ‘Your Song’ in your front room rather than in Madison Square Garden. There is an illusory intimacy that is surely not altogether accidental. It might be a glimpse behind a curtain, but there is too an implicit understanding that there is more hidden somewhere else. Curtains cloaking curtains. Rooms within rooms. As I said, fairy tales seem more real than this. We love to suspend belief, or at least to edit our gaze.

Reading ’The Tastemaker’ it is tempting to wonder whether the times for the likes of John Lennon, Elton John, The Rolling Stones or Tony King might ever truly come again. Do these ‘legends’ belong to a distinct moment in time when Popular Culture was globally homogenised to the balancing point where shared experience was at its peak? A point from where it teetered precariously for the merest blink of an eye before plunging into the maelstrom of a torrent where distinct streams became ever more fractured and where ‘global’ recognition became lessened and shorn of value? Or is that just me projecting my own experience? Out of touch, clueless and blissfully so. Perhaps someone will write a similar book in time where names like Ed Sheeran will reverberate with the same qualities as Lennon and Jagger. And fair play if they do. Whatever…

So do you ever stand in your younger self’s shoes, glance into the future and wonder how on earth you got there from here? My own younger self would surely, like Tony King, gaze on my own unfurling future and think “what the hell…?” In turn I think the same when glancing in the rearview mirror. Head shakes. Discomfort and disbelief. No regrets, but still. Fuck sake.

There is none of this in ‘The Tastemaker’ but you have to think there is at least the possibility such moments might have passed. Perhaps not. Perhaps that’s just another one of those traits of ‘successful’ people. One of the elements that make up ‘genius’. Don’t look back. And if you do, ignore the leering unpleasantness you might see there. At most, add a faint wash of sorrow and a hint of gracious regret that is always qualified with “but what could I do?” Mostly though, celebrate the magic, the beauty and the value of the friendships. That and the love of the cats that you meet on the way…

 

 

 

 

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Finding Meaning Anywhere

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Rupert Loydell

 

 

 

On the Found, Mike Ferguson (Gazebo Gravy Press)

Mike Ferguson hits the found running in the sweet spot between traditional and digital culture, offering 68 witty and creative poems he has constructed or extracted from a tentative canon of the American novel. No waiting on the muse or bullshit about inspiration: Ferguson rolls his sleeves up and fills the bowl with text, mixes it up, adds something random, then abandons the recipe and shapes his work with the mind’s own cookie cutters.

Leave something behind on a recent trip? Fill out the lost property form to report what was lost and we’ll see if someone has turned it in. Make sure you have printed off leaflets and knocked on all the doors in your road, then make sure you’re certain that your original text was just that, not simply a rearrangement of other people’s words or phrases. I mean you can’t complain about losing what wasn’t yours in the first place, that simply wouldn’t be right.

‘The artist formerly known as “author,” therefore, does not, in the imaginary image of the divine creator, produce something out of nothing. She or he is always and already responding to the scene or culture in which one already finds oneself and is, for this reason, responsible only for the manner, method, and means of that particular response.’
     – David J. Gunkel, Of Remixology. Ethics and Aesthetics after Remix

Found poetry is a simulator, a stimulator, with the world being viewed through any number of authors’ eyes. Ferguson uncover the mystery that lies within other fictions, secret texts and alternative readings, a census of misconceptions or, as one poem title puts it, ‘Our World Version’. Because this is how we navigate the world and words now, tripping over our own feet as we try to read our phones, watch a film, reply to emails, or drive the car listening to music in the wrong order and letting a machine instruct us on how to get to our destination. Poets usually find their poems in prose written by others.

‘Human behaviour / is poetry’ declares Ferguson via Salinger, or the other way round, which is why poetry is now like human behaviour: confused, bewildered, lost and immediate, as concerned with the now as the then, as engaged with the fragmented and momentary as longevity and big ideas.

     a person who was

     ever confused
     will learn something

     when poetry is

Writers collect stuff people find; found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. Ezra Found can be visited in any industrial or residential building built or refurbished before the year 2000 but some missing people are never found. Collision investigators are appealing for information because it doesn’t rhyme, and research suggests that authors who sit for more than eight hours a day with no physical activity have a risk of dying similar to that posed by metaphor, assonance, scansion and postmodern theory. The found has been in long term decline since after the Second World War.

‘I found it difficult to find a way to convey my idea and work out how I would explain my poems. I found an enormous collection of language, paragraphs, punctuation and books to sift through. Clearly I wasn’t the only one looking to combine foraged materials with traditional techniques, seek the undiscovered, the classic and the contemporary,’ is the sort of thing Mike Ferguson might have said but didn’t.

He exists to educate, connect and inspire. He believes community and kindness are key ingredients and that poems are forged through the fire of conflict. He is ‘far out / in the / languorous / world’, knows that ‘Artists are / make-believe’. The author is yet to be formally identified but it is believed he is ‘disgracefully diffused’ and possesses ‘a migration of / voices’. His ‘Emptiness / is a guide to / inclusion’, his work ‘a mouthswarm / of the indescribable’. Found is the past tense and past participle of find.

You must report all found poems to the Local Authority warden service by Law. If you wish to keep hold of a found poem then this must be done with permission. We are champions of legendary forgotten makers, can literally find a needle in the haystack, especially if you tell us where it is. We are known to have found meaning anywhere, and make it our business to put your found writing online. ‘If you didn’t want me / I’d go nuts’.

 

 

 

Rupert Loydell

(first published at Tears in the Fence)

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BIT OF AN UPDATE

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Darren Cullen

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Musical Histories

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Rupert Loydell

PZ77. A Town A Time A Tribe, Simon Parker (391pp, £12, Scryfa)
Whole World in an Uproar. Music, Rebellion and Repression 1955-1972, Aaron. J. Leonard
(319pp, £12.99, Repeater Books)
Now and Forever. Towards a Theory and History of the Loop, Tilman Baumgärtel
(389pp, £23.99, Zero Books)

If you look hard enough, every town has its own history, its own web of events, places and moments, worthy of attention. Penzance in 1977 saw The Ramones visit and shake things up, and PZ77 is an oral history of that summer and beyond, when punk arrived in person and Cornwall came alive with musical ambition and subversion. Simon Parker has collected and shaped an oral history from the recollections of over 90 people, organising them into chapters as a playlist, each ending a named track and instructions to PRESS PLAY.

The book is at various times repetitive, rambling, nostalgic and endearing; by the end the reader will know the back streets, cafés, pubs and venues of this town at the end of the (train) line like the back of their hand. Weaving throughout the roll-ups and coffee-cup lingering, the drinking, posing, love affairs and teenage groups are musical missives from elsewhere: Van de Graaf Generator, Barclay James Harvest, Hawkwind, Genesis and Greenslade, gradually giving way to the new sounds of Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, The Damned, The Adverts, The Stranglers, The Vibrators in addition to The Ramones.

It’s hard to equate comments which compare The Ramones to Status Quo (quite rightly imho) to the effect the band seemed to have had on Penzance where, according to Jeremy Beeching, ‘[t]he unfolding punk world seemed like another galaxy, with 1970s Cornwall being very cut off’. But in retrospect the world of music, fashion and behaviour certainly changed, with shocked parents, energised youth and confused venue managers having to process and adapt to the sight of ripped skinny jeans, torn leather jackets and the sound of short, noisy, angry songs, for themselves.

Once again, it’s clear that one of punk’s most important achievements was the opening-up of rock to those without traditional musical skills, a giving of permission to have a go and speak out and make music for yourself. So much of this book is not only about fandom and record collections, but about local bands forming and breaking up, going on tour, practicing, and embracing DIY composition, management, promotion and fashion. Interestingly enough, just as London post-punk often drew on reggae, Cornish punk seems to have been happy sharing space with the folk music and singer-songwriters prevalent at the time. Maybe it’s just the hippy vibe that to this day underpins and sometimes sabotages Cornish ambitions and businesses?

Whatever the case, PZ77 is an entertaining and witty, if slightly self-mythologising, history of one town’s subcultures. It’s a lively, personal, and engaging read, which re-presents and remembers a time many of us lived through.

Chronologically, Aaron J Leonard’s book ends before PZ77 even starts. It documents American society’s attempts to suppress and censor the music it did not understand or comprehend, along with the lifestyles that accompanied them. It’s a story most of us already know in part, although Leonard has made use of extensive research, including newly released FBI files, to produce his ‘new critical history’.

It is a story of non-acceptance and rejection, of protecting financial and power institutions and investments, of racism, media manipulation and censorship. It evidences bewilderment and fear, along with institutional rejection of the idea of free speech, especially when it comes to protesting against war and racial segregation, advocating the use of recreational drugs, or questioning traditional morals and work ethics.

So here is the evidence of who was watching who, of why some performers and acts made it big and others didn’t, of paranoid and fearful responses to change, and a desperation to protect the status quo, the myth of suburban middle class white affluent America. Here are people in power who are afraid of Bob Dylan, of Phil Ochs, of Mississippi Blues and West Coast psychedelia, of Native Americans, Blacks, Asians, sex, sexuality, electric guitars, amplification, long hair and make-up. Or maybe just afraid full stop.

Despite the persecution and surveillance of Nina Simone, Sam Cooke, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger and assorted folkies, as well as whole swathes of other musicians, there was no stopping the music. If the ‘revolution’ failed it wasn’t because of the FBI or CIA, it was because the counterculture imploded and young people grew up to mostly become what they had never wanted to be: new versions of their parents, part of the problem not the answer. And of course big business bought up the music, neutered it, and quickly learnt how to sell it to us.

Now and Forever is far removed from social revolution, it is a detailed, exhaustive and sometimes exhuasting exploration of ‘the loop’ in music, although it touches upon film and the visual arts too. My main problem with it is that Baumgärtel conflates loops with repetition: I don’t mean to be pedantic but surely loops are analogue and in due course decay and stretch, which is very different from digital sequencers or musicians repeating phrases or sequences?

Whilst he soon asserts that ‘[i]f you repeat the same thing it becomes music’ – which I’d question as a rule or a given anyway, he seems less able to take on board the fact that a repeated thing changes, because it is preceded and followed by itself; that is it changes in the hearing if not the delivery. I’m also not willing to accept that Sam Phillips’ treatment of Elvis Presley’s recordings are to do with loops: an echo is not a loop!

However, when I stop grunting about these issues, the book has some fantastic episodes. I’m especially drawn to his chapters on ‘Pierre Schaeffer and the French musique concrète’, ‘Karlheinz Stockhausen and the Music of the Sound Laboratories’, and the later cluster of material which progresses from ‘La Monte Young, Andy Warhol and the Suspension of Time’ to Terry Riley and then early Steve Reich before considering psychedelia. Unfortunately, having explored Ken Kesey’s anarchic use of sound on the Merry Pranksters bus, we get a somewhat laboured and overbaked chapter about the Beatles, focussing on ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ and ‘Revolution 9′, along with an explanation of what a mellotron is or was. Whilst the Beatles may well have been influenced by other composers’ use of loops, it’s hard to take their experimental dabblings any more seriously than their Eastern mysticism.

As I’ve said above, much of this book is fascinating stuff, although the use of a repeated film kiss as a starting point is bewildering, as is the conflation of Warhol’s screenprinted grids with audio loops. Along with better editing (I don’t think Baumgärtal’s repetitions of quotes and phrases is deliberate), I’d like to have seen more consideration of contemporary dance music which makes use of repetition, and more about how music can ‘destroy subjectivity’, when we are immersed in it or it is used as a sonic weapon. Maybe the remit of the book is simply too wide? The idea of the suspension of time, the creation of minimal music and use and abuses of technology would fill a book, as would the consideration of music composed in the (pre-digital) sound studio. I guess the ‘Towards’ in the title is a kind of get out clause, and I can’t deny it’s an intriguing and complex history that the author has assembled.

 

 

 

Rupert Loydell

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BARMAID

Posted on 11 March, 2023 by Editor


 
The book of poetry I’d bought was worse even than I’d reckoned.
I drank a margarita fast, and then I drank a second.
 
How the hell did that book win prizes, and its author accolades?
Thank God the bar had very cute barmaids.
 
I gave the book to one of them and she seemed quite enthused.
If love results, the poet’s talent will have been well used.

 

 

 

© Mark Halliday & Martin Stannard, 2023
Picture Nick Victor

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ANOTHER BILLY

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor


 
Billy tried painting nudes but they made him too nervy
though he had to admit they were his kind of curvy.
 
In sheepskin coats his models he shrouded
Lest by excess of longing his vision be clouded.
 
‘Twas to no avail. His hands would not stop shaking
And it was dreadful to see the mess he was making.

 

 

© Mark Halliday & Martin Stannard, 2023
 

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Et Tu, Radio 2?

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by David Erdos
 
 
Ken Bruce may as well be for England at least, the new Lenny;
Broadcasting’s next martyr, as Radio 2 does him down.
For like the great Lenny Bruce with the cops in those wildcat days
 
Of the Sixties, today’s roaring twenties have rolled him not
From a jazz age but to a seemingly crumbling position
Where even the softest rock crushes crowns. As a Scot,
 
The old shade of Robert the Bruce will remind him that bravery
Under fire, duress, or here, firing is another phoenix-like call
To sift and stir ancient ashes and claim the air now unburdened
 
Of a corporate claim on each wing.  They want a younger audience,
Kenneth says, and so it has been decided to exchange scythe
And needle for someone already content with their plate,
 
As an imagined audience rush like dogs at the gate for Pop’s
Postthey, and where woke in the morning has less awareness
Than my time. In the light of this shift, even wisdom cannot quite
 
Compensate. We’re putting them all out to pasture right now,
By which I don’t just mean Broadcasters. Society’s view on age,
Says him aging, is a death sentence scored on the face. And while
 
That maybe so in every line or change there’s a lesson to which
The young of mind should now listen: the new is a nudging.
It is not a demand to replace. We should not diminish a star
 
In sky or on earth, just because it is older. Will The Rolling Stones
Stoop without Charlie or will Start Me Up, still revive?
An eighty year old McCartney will tour. Ringo Starr seems immortal.
 
Just as the work of Townshend and Davies continues to flow
As age thrives. Weller and Springsteen strum on, as the beautiful
Duran Duran start to resemble the mums of the girls who once
 
Love them, and Damon Albarn a generation along is prettier
Still than most women while he remains King of song.
Stevie Nicks shines. Rickie Lee Jones remains the faultless girl
 
On the bonnet. Kate Bush’s myth enchants always as she stays
In the world she has made. Berkoff, Sinclair, Harper, Brown,
Each one prospers. Edward Bond writes the future as Tom Waits
Stirs his nightshade. Peter Gabriel differs in tiny details after decades.
Sting’s skin bears time’s traces. And yet now the beautiful Linda
Ronstadt can’t sing. Parkinsons holds her hands. Seeing that talent
 
Contained is so tragic. And yet that face, so beguiling has wisdom
Within. Spirit wins. Only Phil Collins wilts as fans worry for him.
And so while these figures are fragile they each have
 
An unequalled force at this time. Ken is not of their kind,
But he is of the crowd they created. His views and standards
Would have been found at the summit to which these talents
 
Had climbed. Take the communicating Chorus away
And the startling verse becomes rootless. It becomes lost
Amongst other verses in a cosmos that even the digital dream
 
Can’t define. In ten years possibly, mine will be a world
Without heroes. Or heroines – maybe longer, as the women
Of course remain strong. But if certain Caesers are cut,
 
Who is the most brutal Brutus? As friends and countrythey falter,
Who can forebear life’s full song? We are cutting everything:
Cash, common sense, hearts and bus routes.
 
The world is unwinding. Radio 2. Putin. England:
Is this what you want to go on?
These singers sang to feel free and they sang about freedom.
 
We seem to have forgotten those lyrics. If something like Ken’s
Yen is fading, to what kind of station do you wish to listen to
And belong? This then is a poem that’s made from a time
 
Of true testing. Bruce and Radio 2 one example of the stumble
And slip beneath floods, which suddenly turn to drought,
As we awake, barred and barren. So, take out your own discs
 
And spin them. We’re the DJ’s now. The past bloods.
 
 
 
 
                                                                                                            David Erdos  1/3/23 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
.
 
 
 
 
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The Mudcubs and the Clean-Up King

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

Once upon a time there lived a King who ruled over a great city. A city made up of houses, flats, bungalows and maisonettes which housed lawyers and cleaners, builders and accountants, parents, teachers and mudcubs of all shapes, sizes and descriptions. Although each of the King’s subjects were so different they all had one thing in common. To a man, woman and child they were all untidy.

Cans, wrappers, carriers, fag ends, bottles and papers were left in a constant stream, like a snail’s trail, behind each of the cities inhabitants. Their cars pumped out a lethal cocktail that hung in the air like smog and infected their lungs. Their factories pumped more waste which gunged up rivers killing fish and wildlife.

No one appeared to notice, least of all care, with the exception of the King. Tears sprang to his eyes each time he looked out of his palace window and saw the mess that his city was in. He had tried everything he could to get his people to tidy up. He had put up signs, taken out adverts, issued health warnings, recorded startling documentaries and offered rewards but still they would not tidy up.

In the end he decided there was only one thing for it. So, he took off his crown, took off his robe, got up from his throne and walked out of his palace. He found himself a broom, a shovel and a barrow and pushed them down into the city to begin cleaning up by himself.

When the Clean-Up King got out onto the streets he found things were worse than he had thought. There were hills of junk and mountains of rubbish. That wasn’t all though, then there was the smell. The stink from all that thrown away food, scraps and leftovers, as it rotted and decomposed was terrible. The Clean-Up King held his nose and set to work.

It wasn’t long before he had filled his barrow. Outside the city he remembered that there was a great, deep quarry. He wheeled his barrow out of the city gates and along to the quarry. He emptied his barrow and started back again. He hadn’t made much difference, the junk mountains looked as high as before, but he dug his shovel in one more time and began to fill up again.

After a time people began to notice the Clean-Up King. Some people stopped to watch him, then started to make jokes and laugh. Other people joined them and then there was a crowd all pointing and laughing. Once, when he had just cleared up one space, a man walked out of the crowd and dropped more rubbish onto the clean ground. Everyone in the crowd clapped and cheered. The Clean-Up King kept on working.

When evening came and it became dark and cold the people in the crowd began to drift away until there were only seven people left watching the King, the seven mudcubs. After a time he noticed them there and called to them to come over. “Why are you doing all this?” they asked. “Sit down here with me,” said the Clean-Up King, “and I’ll tell you.”

He told them about a different world with grass, trees and flowers, animals, birds and fish. A world with deep, rich, beautiful colours where everything was fresh, clean and sparkling. “Oh, if only you could see the glint of the sun shimmering on the river’s ripples,” he told them and while he told them it seemed as though they could.

“Why don’t you help me?” he asked them. “We could get so much more done if you would.” They thought for a moment. “People would laugh at us,” they said, “our parents wouldn’t like it, we’d get dirty, and there’s too much anyway, you’ll never get it finished!” “Don’t worry,” said the Clean-Up King, “you start when you’re ready”, and he got back to work.

The mudcubs watched him as he shovelled and brushed by himself. “He could do with some help,” they said, “he’ll never get through on his own. We could help for an hour or so and then go home.” One took the broom, another the shovel, the King wheeled the barrow and the work moved a little faster.

In the morning the crowd came back. Only this time they didn’t just stand and laugh. This time they dropped rubbish, broke the broom, threw away the shovel and tipped over the barrow. They made the mudcubs run away, but the Clean-Up King still went on working. He righted the barrow and, using his hands, refilled it. As he wheeled it away the whole crowd followed him.

When they reached the quarry, and saw where he was going, they all began to shout. “In the pit, in the pit!” Then they all rushed forward and pushed the Clean-Up King into the quarry with his rubbish. He lay on the heap of rubbish, clutching his side, when down came a torrent of cans, bottles, tins and other junk. The crowd were pelting him with rubbish. They did not stop until he was completely covered up and they could not even see one hair on his head.

Back in the city the mudcubs sat on the pavement and cried. They had seen it all but there was nothing that they could have done. Suddenly they heard someone speaking to them and it sounded like the Clean-Up King. They looked all around but they couldn’t see anyone. “I’m really here,” said the King, “it’s just that you can’t see me anymore.” “We can still clear up,” he said, ” but I will need your help more than ever.”

The mudcubs picked up shovels and went to find barrows. They started to work while the Clean-Up King told them all about the other beautiful world. When people came to watch they told them what the Clean-Up King had said about the other beautiful world. Most people laughed and said that it was all their imagination but some people joined them and began to help. Then the Clean-Up King would come and speak to them too.

They are all still working now. The junk mountains have got smaller but they are still there. More people have joined them but not enough. They dream of a day when everyone lives in the other beautiful world but they know it won’t happen until everyone in the city joins in their Clean-Up. What about you? Won’t you?

 

 

Jonathan Evens
Illustration: Claire Palmer

 

 

 

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My Other Friend Steve

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

 

Ended drug addicted. Arched a man
on a dark sidewalk with a finger
like a gun in the back yet had to
punch him down for his money.

Taunted a blackmailed lover held
a gun that banged and folded
Steve on a dirt alley.
Years before, Steve heard complaints

about Dad, said Hey, Zen fable:

A man alone, thigh deep halfway
across a fast river, stops, legs shaking,
and a monk calls from the far bank:
Tired of carrying your father?

Steve’s dad: Beat his son routinely.

 

 

 

George Shelton

 

 

.

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Complacent Humans

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Heidi Stephenson

 

https://thevegancalculator.com/animal-slaughter/

NOTES:

Max Ehrmann gave up working as the credit manager for his family’s ‘meat-packing’ business in 1912 at the age of 40. He became a writer. His most famous work is the prose poem DESIDERATA (1927).

Max Ehrmann’s original words:

1 women
2 women
3 women’s
4 women
5 human
6 life
7 music
8 human
9 I have added an extra “thousand” to give a sense of the length and scale of our atrocities. Animal murder has been our “tongue of shame” for at least 2.5 million years. We humans have enslaved our fellow beings in order to kill them for at least 11,500 years.
10 playthings
11 claim your

The italics are my own

 

 

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About the War

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

 

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At The Q of The Summer

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Kushal Poddar

 

Now, at the Q of the summer, beginning, the shadows of the steeples
have not yet dared to enter inside
the the temple. Words are unformed;
sentences are unstructured. The beggar,
crazy, curses all who does not provide.
The steps to the dark door ajar host
the slumber party of the dogs. I walk
forever, tapping the tips of the shadows
displaying my OCD to no one and all.
Ten helping hands chop the weather-change
in the rice bowl of the market. The spices are fresh.
The smell is stale. Those sweat-crystals
do not make the food salty enought yet.

 

 

 

 

Kushal Poddar
Picture Nick Victor

Kushal Poddar lives in Kolkata, India

@amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
 Author Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/ 
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

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 The Pond

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor


 
The pond sits lazy
on its bed all summer reflecting heat back
at the sky. Three doors down the street
is an empty house whose owner
was a mystery. The pair of Black-necked Stilts
returned this week together
with a juvenile still learning
water’s ways. The old lady’s son got into
the kind of trouble only
police cars know. A Greater Yellowlegs took off
and displayed the white on its tail
all the way across
the sun’s cool ripples. First it was
a dry waller’s truck parked in the driveway
and later the painter’s a few days
before the notices were posted on the door
to stop further work. The small grebe
has a mate this year
and they take turns disappearing and resurfacing.
The son never came back. This time of year
the Wigeons arrive, more Coots, Ruddy Ducks
and Buffleheads. The neighbors take turns
reading what is posted and
speculating on what happened. A Black Phoebe
picks insects from the light
and perches on a fencepost with a view
of winter floating gently
on the day’s reflections. There’s work
to be done before anyone
can move back in, the kind requiring
a shaman to dispel the curse of ill health and
set a fire for arrest warrants. He will lead
the sky in prayer. He will show
the water birds the safest
place to land.

 

 

David Chorlton
Photo Nick Victor

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God is a flower

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

 

I love people telling me
They write poetry

But they’re not searching
For the same Truth as me

Theirs is more to do
With a flower
Blooming in spring

Mines is more
To do with

How do I turn
This flower
Into God

 

 

Paul Butterfield Jr
Pic Claire Palmer

 

 

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carmen cygni

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

black labradors bark on an Isle of Dogs beach
and beluga sturgeon whistle Blackberry Way
as they lay black eggs, shiny as the Shard.
a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square
but the sweetness of its song could not compare
to the fiscal fishy arias of the sturgeon’s
still extant forefather, the anathemata of
the beluga whale – canary of the Thames.
the King told the Queen and the Queen
told the under footman: we must have some caviar
for the royal slice of toast.
upstream at Thames Eyot
a choir of black swans brood in wait
preparing their carmen cygni for the spectre of exit,
the republican party’s uninvited ghost.
on Oliver’s Island where Cromwell once hid
no state of grace is here to stay
and the people are wondering what they did –
the sturgeon never no more sing nor lay.
eels on Eel Pie Island sing the blues
wriggling in uncomfortable nostalgia
for remembrance of things past.
the first black swan along the way
opens its beak and prepares to speak
as the silent sturgeon wonder
what on earth it’s going to say.

(With kind acknowledgment to BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House. Beluga whales are known as the canaries of the sea, hence those on the Thames are the canaries of the Thames.)

 

 

Julian Isaacs

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ONLY TO SLOWLY FADE

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

 

 

What do you mean nice?

 It’s not nice you idiot! It’s art… – Bertolt Brecht

 

Artistic forms, styles and movements have a mortal inner life, like societies they evolve through time – they follow a hyperbolic evolutionary curve, reaching a peak of development, only to slowly fade as they are superseded by other diversions. For example Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera (after John Gay) was an ‘occasional’ work claiming an anti-establishment leftist agenda that to tell the truth never convinced anybody at the time – on the other hand it has been correctly observed that the implications of its style and form have not been fully digested, even today.

The cynical tone of the songs and the cavalier disregard for highbrow/lowbrow distinctions permeating the work as a whole opened up a new approach to the theatre that proved problematic for subsequent generations. Few are prepared to admit that, in Berlin in 1928 at the Theatre am Schiffbauerdamm, ‘serious’ art music and opera died an inglorious death.

The political spasms of the twentieth century, together with the rise of the mass media, still obscure the passing of nineteenth century aesthetic categories, including the avant-garde and the seriously experimental – the radicalism of the Second Vienna School notwithstanding.

The Munich Opera House was destroyed in October 1943, prompting Richard Strauss to draft several bars of music ‘in mourning’. Listening to the final work, Metamorphosen, one senses not just the horror of those ‘dark days’ but also, in its tenuous echoes of Tristan and ‘Eroica’, a lamentation for the end of an entire phase of European musical sensibility.

 

 

 

A.C. Evans

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Free.

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

Kites run away
The vast blue torpedo
Summer’s wintry song
The spring zest
All nonchalantly blue
Sometimes reddish in a murky way
Long roads lead to nowhere
Petals lose their appetite
Keeps the token in a sugarcane
A safebox to point out my fault lines
Where do i reside after giving all my springs
Gigantic metropolis and a narrowed
Necromancy
Truth hides in volumes
Still adrift In the world sky
National treasure too pointy to mark out
My locked treasure map
Feathers pigeons know the truth
Nature is brave enough
It wears the heart out loud
My simplicity is a facade
Murmuring safety pins amongst ruins
Tobacco pink promised land
The utopia of crime and punishment
A beaded paradox
Maya dipped my simple smile
It knows how to be brave enough
My feathers are free.

 

 

 

Sayani Mukherjee.
Picture Rupert Loydell

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COFFEE!

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

 

Sitting under the cerulean sky

Gazing at the twinkling stars

I see

Time flies

Like a butterfly.

When the wind caresses my face

I feel every bit of its pace.

As my eyes looked at him

The aroma entering my nostrils

Removes the negativity of mind,

Feeds me enthusiasm,

And awaken the inner spirit.

How good it would be

If I’m bittersweet?

All my chaos vanishes away

When I sip you

My dear coffee.

 

 

 

 

 

Monalisa Parida 
Photo Nick Victor

Bio:-  A post graduate student of English literature from India, Odisha and a prolific poetess. She  is very active in social media platforms and her poems have also been translated into different  languages and publish in various e-journals.

   She has got 100 international award for writing poetry. Her poems have been publishing international e-journals “New York parrot”, “The Writers Club” (USA), “Suriyadoya literary  foundation”, “kabita Minar”, “Indian Periodical” (India) and “Offline Thinker “, “The Gorkha Times “ ( Nepal), “The Light House”(Portugal), “Bharatvision”(Romania), “International cultural forum for humanity and creativity”(Aleppo, Syria), “Atunispoetry.com”(Singapore) etc. And also published in various newspapers like “The Punjabi Writer Weekly(USA)”,  “News Kashmir (J&K, India)”, Republic of Sungurlu (Turkey)” etc.

One of  her poem published an American anthology named “The Literary Parrot Series-1 and  series-2 respectively (New York, USA)”. Her poems have been translated in various languages like Hindi, Bengali, Turkish, Persian, Romanian etc.  And she is the author of the book “Search For Serenity”, “My Favourite Grammar”, “Paradigm”, “Beyond Gorgeous”.

 

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From Out of the Unknown

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

Zephyr Sounds
 

Tracklist:
Power of Zeus – Sorcerer of Isis (Instrumental Thunder Edit)
The Beatles – Tomorrow Never Knows (Leftside Wobble Edit)
The Turtles – I’m Chief Kamanawanalea
Primal Scream – Loaded
Cozy Powell – Dance With the Devil
Incredible Bongo Band – Let There be Drums
Can – A Spectacle
East of Eden – Jig-a-Jig
Mahavishnu Orchestra – Can’t Stand Your Funk
Sopwith Camel – Coke, Suede and Waterbeds
Hawkwind – Hurry On Sundown

 

Zephyr George
Steam Stock

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Stonehenge ’85

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor



Stonehenge for the People!

STONEHENGE ’85 – Souvenir Issue
Includes first-hand accounts from The Battle of the Beanfield, June 1st 1985
Edited by Sheila Craig
32 pages, A5 booklet
Published June 1986

“The newspapers described it as a ‘battle’, we experienced it as an attack. Of course in one sense it was a battle, of ideas, ideology, but Rainbow Warriors are warriors of the spirit and do not carry arms. We went, in our vehicles with our homes on our backs. And we didn’t just take our families/our animals/our beds/our books/our clothes/ our pots and pans, we took with us the warm fires, leafy hedgerows, smokey logs crackling under the stars.

“For Stonehenge is more than a festival, it’s a way of life, a celebration of a way of living all year round. For many it’s as much a part of the annual cycle as solstice is to summer. Is it really possible to stop the solstice sunrise?

“Afterwards, to add insult to injury … the police confiscated our axes and saws and other domestic implements saying they were dangerous weapons, though it seems symbolic of the way in which the authorities are trying to undermine the survival of the travelling movement which, behind the “dirty hippies” propaganda, they find politically threatening.

“Well, we never got our axes back, or our saws, but we still have the stars, the hedgerows and the crackling log fires …”

Sheila

Read here, courtesy The Stone Club: https://stoneclub.substack.com/p/stonehenge-85

or buy this and other booklets from Unique Publications at:
https://www.unique-publications.co.uk/stonehenge-85.html


Beanfield photo by Alan Lodge

 

 

Nick Mann

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Anxiety Disorder

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

my liver is excised
exported to the roots
into slivers of silver moons
desecrated by the church
it is full up with flacid
hobby-horses & ministering
angels who whisper
amid perfect bloodbaths
the wreck & hollow aftermath
is afterwards forgotten in amnesty
of artichoke derision derived
from the motion of this anxiety-sea
the dovetailing of my worshipful
lord & master & ramming home
of golden platitudes exhaled.

 

 

 

Clive Gresswell
Picture Nick Victor

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VICTOR BROX

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

{1941-2023

Obviously, the beard
A story in (and of) itself

Was it real?
I never thought to ask

The hat
His laugh

But the music and the voice
The life he lived and loved

Those moments where
The thing he did

Was different
To what had gone before

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Steven Taylor
Photo byWilliam Ellis

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Living in the Happy Valley

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

 

Alan Dearling

I’ve been living in the Upper Calderdale Valley for about five years. My home is in Todmorden which lies at the cross-ways, where two valleys join into one. The long valley runs across eastwards following the River Calder and the canal running towards Halifax and Sowerby Bridge via Hebden Bridge and Luddendenfoot. The other two Upper Calder Valleys continue like two out-stretched arms towards Rochdale via Walsden and Littleborough, and on towards Burnley via Cornholme and Portsmouth.

These are the real life ‘Happy Valleys’ which have been viewed in the BBC TV series. Valleys occupied by old Mill towns and villages, the Rochdale Canal, rivers, reservoirs and the Pennines. Now the towns are cultural and social melting pots. Tourism, gentrification, nestling alongside economic and social deprivation. The reality of the Happy Valleys is much more complex, most of the time much less violent and polarised than the tower blocks, drugs, car chases and blood and guts characterised in the three series of ‘Happy Valley’ from the BBC.  

In fact, Hebden Bridge, Todmorden, Heptonstall and Halifax are cultural and music hubs. The Trades Club in Hebden hosts many major music events, likewise, the Golden Lion in Tod. ‘Kindness’ is the motto of Tod. Many bars and pubs have signs boldly proclaiming: ‘Stand by your Trans!’ Environmental actions and bio-diversity are loudly championed, but so are UFO sightings, and the waft of ‘herb’ that drifts up and down the Valleys in all directions. Crystals, bottle shops, micro pubs, charcuteries, vinyl record stalls and the famed outdoor and indoor markets. These rub shoulders with graffiti, smashed windows and young guys in hoodies driving dangerously on pavements and roads on illegal souped-up electric bikes.

Alongside that is the isolated splendour of Pennine ‘Tops’ – these are the rugged moors that have been part of many histories. They have also provided the visual backdrop for many scenes in the ‘Happy Valley’ TV series and helped make it a global phenomenon.

Obviously the three TV series, with 18 episodes, have become so popular because of the quality and ‘authenticity’ of Sally Wainright’s scripts. They engage viewers in the personal lives of Sergeant Catherine Cawood, her sister, Clare, a recovering heroin-addict and alcoholic and Catherine’s grandson, Ryan. Then there’s the bleak ‘back-story’ of the suicide of Catherine’s daughter, Rebecca, Ryan’s mum. But the leering, smiling malevolence of the murderer and sex offender Tommy Lee Royce, played by James Norton is a deeply unsettling protagonist. The ‘Happy Valley’ series has provided a veritable masterclass in acting from the stars including Sarah Lancashire and James Norton.

Both series one and two won the BAFTAs for drama series and writing, while Sarah Lancashire won the leading actress prize for the second series. The third series recently aired in January and February 2023 will in all likelihood ‘eclipse’ the success of the first two series shows which were shown on the BBC in 2014 and 2016

‘Happy Valley’ is a mix of fiction. It is set in the Calder Valley, West Yorkshire, but was filmed in many locations across the north of England. The show’s creator Sally Wainwright was born in Huddersfield and raised in Sowerby Bridge in Calderdale – both used for locations in the three series. And even HMP Wakefield prison.

In life, as in the fictional TV series, two towers loom high above casting giant shadows over Happy Valley. Here’s what is says about them in Wikipedia.

Near Kings Cross, Halifax: “Wainhouse Tower, designed by the architect Isaac Booth, was originally designed as a chimney to serve the local dye works owned by John Edward Wainhouse, to satisfy the Smoke Abatement Act of 1870. Wainhouse was a keen advocate of smoke prevention and decided that a high chimney on the top of the hill would be beneficial for the townspeople. A much simpler chimney would have satisfied the requirements of the law, but with an interest in architecture Wainhouse insisted that it should be an object of beauty. It was erected in four years and completed on 9 September 1875, at a total cost of £14,000. It is the tallest structure in Calderdale and the tallest folly in the world.”

“Stoodley Pike: The monument replaced an earlier structure, started in 1814 and commemorating the defeat of Napoleon and the surrender of Paris. It was completed in 1815, after the Battle of Waterloo (Napoleonic Wars), but collapsed in 1854 after an earlier lightning strike, and decades of weathering. Its replacement was therefore built slightly further from the edge of the hill. During repair work in 1889 a lightning conductor was added, and although the tower has since been struck by lightning on numerous occasions, no notable structural damage is evident. There is evidence to suggest that some sort of structure existed on the site even before the earlier structure was built. The monument is approximately 2 miles south west of Hebden Bridge and approximately 2.5 miles east of Todmorden town centre.”

‘

‘Happy Valley’ locations include:

  • Various sites in Hebden Bridge including the railway station, Crown Street, and the Nisa convenience store, particularly Catherine’s house, filmed at Cleveland Place/Hanginroyd Lane. The NISA shop is the location for Neil’s shop and the flat where Clare and Neil live is close by Catherine’s fictional home.
  • Sowerby Bridge police station and The Moorings.
  • West View Park and Old Halifax swimming pool.
  • Fenton Street, Kings Cross.
  • Heath Hill Road, Mount Tabor and Cold Edge Road /Withens Road in Wainstalls on the (Pennine) Tops.
  • The railway viaduct in Todmorden.
  • Tower block, Tuel Lane, Sowerby Bridge.
  • Rochdale Canal.
  • Heptonstall is the site of the fictional grave of Rebecca Cawood.
  • Hebden Bridge railway station for trains to Leeds.

For the locals in the Calderdale Valleys, the almost daily spectre of film and TV crews is a double-edged sword. It brings many visitors to the area seeking out the locations of their favourite TV programmes and books. But the actual filming has been more than a minor inconvenience for many. Residents have had belongings and their milk stolen from doorsteps, even a stone Buddha from the doorstep of the house opposite Catherine’s home. They’ve been prevented from parking and unloading shopping into their own homes, in many cases paid to go and stay in hotels whilst filming took place. And there’s the constant stream of inquisitive tourists. Life can become one that is trapped in a goldfish bowl. That is set to continue and expand. In fact there are now organised (four star hotel) tours organised to travel in comfort around the ‘Happy Valley’ TV series locations. The ‘Yorkshire Post’ reported that the final episode of the show’s third series was watched by 7.5million viewers. Adding that, “Calderdale councillor Jane Scullion said: ‘We’ve gone from five productions being filmed in 2016, to a massive 27 in 2022’.”

Lucy Mangan, in ‘The Guardian’, called the final episode, “…brutal, tender, funny, compelling and heartbreaking.”

The on-line ‘Visit Calderdale’ site tells us: “Calderdale will also soon be on your TV in ‘The Gallows Pole’, a six part adaptation of Ben Myer’s book  of the same name telling the story of the infamous Cragg Vale Coiners and Marvel Cinematic Universe series ‘Secret Invasion’, starring Samuel L. Jackson.”  ‘Gallows Pole’ looks set to become another major BBC series having been directed by the renowned film director, Shane Meadows (‘This is England’). It’s likely to be as violent, poignant and engaging as ‘Peaky Blinders’ and ‘Happy Valley’. Watch out for it.

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Economies of Scale

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

 

In the flea market, fleas haggle and spit. They finger fabric with whatever fleas have in lieu of fingers and pose in front of tiny mirrors like catwalk models. Fleas don’t know much, but they know about style and they know about walking on cats, strutting from twitching tail to that sweet spot between the ears. It’s in their borrowed blood, a state of domestic bliss; and if fleas had religion they’d call it Nirvana, but all they have is swagger and sensual delight. When all’s said and done, a flea’s just a flea, but it’s better than being meat. In the meat market no one looks good.

 

 

 

 

Oz Hardwick

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Breaking The Silence

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Rupert Loydell

     You that never done nothin’
     But build to destroy
     You play with my world
     Like it’s your little toy
     You put a gun in my hand
     And you hide from my eyes
          – Bob Dylan, ‘Masters of War’

     Looking back now
     I can see
     the ghost of myself
     haunting me
          – Pet Shop Boys, ‘The Ghost of Myself


What We Know On Day One

Once upon a time, there was a polysexual hippy assassin named Jerry Cornelius. He had a past filled with adventure and danger, and often found himself in precarious situations. One day, Jerry decided to take a break from his life and explore the world. He travelled to different countries and encountered different cultures. Everywhere he went, he made a lasting impression with his unique sense of style and his individual way of life. Jerry eventually settled down in a small town and started living peacefully. He still had his moments of adventure, but he mostly led a balanced lifestyle. He spent his days working, and his nights exploring the town and meeting new people, and was involved in dozens of organisations: a running club, community gardening and a public speaking group for women.

The Splashback Scandal

It is a model of belligerent fascism and land-grabbing tyranny, with ambiguous reverence for men’s bodies. Jerry is kept in a tiny cage, she has no food or water but, in this stylised and theatricalised episode, this is not as important as the idea of imprisonment.

Later, a resourceful guard uses a salvaged bit of wire to saw through her neck. The sheriff’s department will not say how or where the body was found. The violence is the latest to rock community leaders. Following the incident, Jerry says she managed to get away but was followed into the clubhouse by the owners of a dog, who she claims was filming her.

Over-prioritise and you’ll find yourself at yet another detention centre from which you will emerge broken, holes in the knees of your trousers and a chunk of your self-respect forever lost somewhere in the ball pit. Jerry says she is especially concerned about her mental wellbeing.

What We Know On Day Fifty Seven

It feels as if events and encounters could be reshuffled and shown in any order. Every gesture is beautifully expressive, rich with emotion but is just going to make things worse because it will cement in place an agreement that has destroyed power sharing. The only choices that Jerry is allowed to make are meaningless.

Disco Boy: a freaky trip into the heart of darkness

The electronic score throbs in its own incantatory trance and is a thing of beauty. It’s quite a trip, manipulating the space-time continuum and travelling through time to control the universe. Live, the band are something like a hallucinatory nervous breakdown, playing music which gains its own kind of mysterious reality simply by being excessively loud. There is a sense of confrontational spectacle and narcosis, and soon everyone is having sex: rough, dangerous, obsessive sex. Everyone is overwhelmed with guilt but ecstatically infected with confrontational spectacle and narcosis. Jerry may be choosing the person who will be at his side for the duration of all time. I don’t know if he’ll be able to get out.

What We Know On Day Eighty Four

Once upon a time, there was a musical assassin named Jerry Cornelius. She was a spy with the power to travel through time and control the universe with music. She began her journey by exploring different periods of history, eventually mastering the art of using her powers to protect those who could not protect themselves from dangerous events.

Jerry eventually grew older and started to reflect on her life. She realized that she had made many friends along the way, and that they had all helped her to become the person she was today, a charismatic guerrilla fighter who with her sister leads an insurgent paramilitary group. But there were limits to what she could do during the war.

In The Ruins

Everywhere there is great economic unease and generational trauma, mysterious political and historical dimensions. The past is a time-capsule of Europe’s recent tragic past, documenting post-apocalyptic illness, a state of bewilderment and discombobulation.

Someday we’ll kiss the future and tell each other everything.

     © Rupert M Loydell

 

 

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The Future Never Waits

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

Hawkwind have announced a brand-new studio album. The Future Never Waits follows their critically acclaimed 2021 album Somni and 2022 double live album We Are Looking In On You. This is the band’s 35th studio album and is an outstanding addition to their varied and celebrated catalogue.

Opening track ‘The Future Never Waits’ delivers a ten minute instrumental led space-age march, before progressing into the guitar-driven follow up ‘The End’, featuring Dave Brock’s trademark vocals and chugging machine gun riffs. Innovative additions to the Hawkwind canon such as ‘Aldous Huxley’ and ‘They Are So Easily Distracted’ introduce a gradual, almost lounge-like quality, with deliberate piano, audio samples and saxophones lamenting over a futuristic backdrop and roaming guitar solos. Other tracks like ‘Rama (The Prophecy)’ and ‘I’m Learning To Live Today’ sit tightly in the Hawkwind groove, providing old and new fans alike with the intense and concentrated fusion of musical styles they’ve come to expect and celebrate.

The Future Never Waits was made by Hawkwind, who are currently Dave Brock, Richard Chadwick, Magnus Martin, Doug MacKinnon and Tim ‘Thighpaulsandra’ Lewis. It will be available from Cherry Red on both CD and double vinyl and will be released to coincide with live shows in the spring and summer, including headlining at the UK Prognosis Festival on April 23.

Meanwhile, here are Hawkwind playing ‘Levitation’ live at Hawkfest 2022.

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REVIEWS FROM THE ADELAIDE FRINGE FESTIVAL 2023

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

A VISIT TO DOWN UNDER

By Kevin Short

In 2020, a visit to the Adelaide Fringe Festival had to be cancelled due to bush fires and then the beginning of Covid. Now, in 2023, I am here supporting the wonderful John Otway on an equally wonderful boat called ‘Popeye’, an iconic river cruise venue (one of three) which offers great events as it gently floats down the Torrens River.

 

We are half-way through our week’s run, with probably only one show left on Sunday March 5th by the time you read this but, rest assured, it has been the trip of a lifetime, and as well as entertaining the Australian crowd, as always, I and my partner in crime (Kathryn Kraus) are also reviewing some of the shows at the festival.

As a veteran of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Adelaide, in comparison, might be described as the best of Edinburgh gone by. It is smaller, generally more accessible, and the city is cleaner, warmer and, dare I say it, friendlier to the outsider. I have loved Edinburgh (notably the biggest Arts Festival in the world) but over recent times it has become a commercial mine field which favours profit beyond all else.  Adelaide may not be the biggest, but it gets my vote as one of the best, so, thank you to all the organizers and to the great Popeye team.

Meanwhile, we hope you enjoy our reviews from down under, and here’s a link to quite a comprehensive review of the show we are performing here:

https://theclothesline.com.au/john-otway-kevin-short-adelaide-fringe-2023-review

Plus, a couple of fun photos of John Otway and myself in between performances:

 

              By Kevin Short & Kathryn S Kraus

 

PAM FORD

DON’T YOU DARE! (PUT ME IN A CARE HOME)

Many comedians perform shows that are strictly based on how many jokes they can fit into their set. Pam Ford isn’t one of them. She creatively weaves hilarious, yet touching, stories about her life working in a care home in England. Moving seamlessly from sitting exercises for the residents, to a well-meaning assistant who decided to bulk wash dentures, Pam’s delivery had the audience crying with laughter. She makes these stories hit home when talking about surviving Covid amongst the elderly population, and her own struggles to make ends meet during that difficult time. There are not many comedians that deliver comedy with heart, but Pam is one of them. Bravo!                                                               

(Reviewer: Kathyrn S Kraus)

Pam Ford – Don’t You Dare! (Put Me In A Care Home) Performance schedule:

Sun 5 Mar 5:45pm
Tue 7 Mar – Sun 11 Mar 5:45pm
Tue 14 Mar – Sun 19 Mar 5:45pm
The Boardroom @ The Griffins Hotel
38 Hindmarsh Square, Adelaide.

 

NEW BLOOD – the musical

The day before I was set to see the musical New Blood, I came across the company outside a café as they were going through their scripts – serendipity indeed – we had a brief chat and their openness and obvious commitment to their show cemented my interest in seeing it. A packed town hall venue greeted me, and I was immediately immersed in this original show written and devised by the company of five, playing multiple roles. The themes of small town living and all its community trials and tribulations as dreamers, developers, and other unwanted suburbanites descend upon their heavenly haven, really packs a punch.                                                  

In a series of narrative tuneful solos, duets, trios, and other dynamically harmonized songs, the five performers deliver performances truly grounded in reality, a meaningful set of relationships, personal and collective dilemmas that challenge our perspectives, something rarely done in musicals these days. They only play two performances, sadly, but as the standing ovations will confirm, this is a show that will develop and continue to grow, so bravo to all!  Congratulations Joel Cooper, Melia Naughton, Anouska Gammon, Mikey Bryant, and Elodie Crow, you deserve all the success that will surely come your way. 
(Reviewer: Kevin Short)

 

THE MARVELLOUS ELEPHANT MAN – The Musical

 

Now, here is a new musical chalk and cheese review. Following the wonderful originality of New Blood, I enter the packed audience of The Marvellous Elephant Man – The Musical.  Is it marvellous? Is it really the Elephant Man we have known from history and the wonderfully touching film? Neither could I answer yes to. Then, what is it? Yes, it is a musical, albeit a burlesque-style one, with a few exciting show numbers. The opening number really lifted one’s spirits and hopes, but when the white-faced Elephant Man appeared, anti-climax after anti-climax followed, and a convoluted non-convincing romantic narrative was interrupted by some genuinely unoriginal songs of gratuitous innuendo after innuendo, together with some Rocky Horror shadow screen theatrics.

To be fair, all the performers were excellent, great voices, movers and shakers but, for me, they were flogging a dead elephant. I think, perhaps, using and exploiting The Elephant Man story in such a meaningless way is what makes it a travesty of bad intent. Yes, they had a part standing ovation, yes, most of the audience loved it, and most reviews, no doubt, will be favourable but, alas, I found it hollow and unoriginal. Nevertheless, please go see, and judge for yourself.

(Reviewer: Kevin Short)

The Marvellous Elephant Man – The Musical performance schedule:

Fri 3 Mar: 9:30pm
Sat 4 Mar: 6:30pm
Sun 5 Mar: 6pm
Tue 7 Mar: 8:30pm
Wed 8 Mar – Fri 10 Mar: 9:30pm
Sat 11 Mar – Mon 13 Mar: 8:30pm

Wonderland Spiegeltent at Wonderland Festival Hub – Hindmarsh Square

Hindmarsh Square / Mukata, Corner Grenfell and Pulteney Street, Adelaide, Kaurna Country.

 

 

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Not Afraid

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Rupert Loydell

         

Heavy Heavy, Young Fathers (Ninja Tune)

This Edinburgh trio, who met as kids, produce an amazing music together. Somehow there’s rap, chant, rhythm, electronica and soul all in the mix, with this new album definitely bringing out the soul and the band’s connection and vital energy to the fore, far more than their previous recordings.

They are not afraid to use hooks and choruses, but neither are they afraid to make a noise: layering up vocals, crashing beats and samples to clever effect. The rhythms appear simple but accumulate into layered complexities and dense echoing space, a kind of dub intensity without reggae, a generous soul-full music.

When I saw them live, supporting – but also singing with/for – Massive Attack, Young Fathers almost blew the stage apart in a way that Massive Attack could only match with their information overload stageshow. Young Fathers don’t need anything more than their voices, some instruments and time; mix in some joyful exuberance and you have 10 short songs (the whole album is only 33 minutes) full of pulsating drive, streetwise lyrics, emotional longing and loss, attitude and desire.

The 70s are in the mix here as well as grime and dance music. I hear traces of disco, glam rock, pop and postpunk too; the closing ‘Be Your Lady’ even has a hint of Barry White in there too, before the track explodes into rays of broken-glass crystal synthesizer, then loops back into song and rap.

It’s this slipping between genres and styles, this totally appropriate mash-up of 21st century sound, that may be the reason that Young Fathers have eluded popular rather than critical acclaim. When it’s as hard to pin a label on a band as it is here lazy audiences get confused and shut their ears. They are, however, missing a treat. Young Fathers are a perfect blend and reinvention of all that’s good in popular music, the sound of appropriation, celebration and joyful resistance.

 

Rupert Loydell

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TEN QUESTIONS FOR ANTHONY MOORE

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

 
 

 

Keith Rodway

I first became aware of Anthony Moore when I bought Slapp Happy’s eponymous album on Virgin Records in 1974, a recording sandwiched between earlier collaborations with German avant-rockers Faust and later with Brit-prog outfit Henry Cow. Slapp Happy’s pan-European whimsy, fronted by German singer Dagmar Krause, was a welcome relief from the torpor of mainstream acts such as Eric Clapton, Bad Company and Fleetwood Mac. It is an album I still find intriguing almost 50 years later.

Moore then released an excellent post-punk solo album, Flying Doesn’t Help, in 1979. Then, for me, the lines went dead. I only discovered recently that there was a second solo album, World Service, in 1981. Moore acted as lyricist on a handful of songs for David Gilmore’s Pink Floyd albums, A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell, wrote No Parlez for Paul Young and collaborated with such stylistically disparate acts as Julian Lennon, Trevor Rabin and Kevin Ayers. Slapp Happy released a highly recommended reunion album, Ca Va, in 1988.


In addition to all this Moore has released several albums of experimental music along the way and enjoyed a 20-year tenure as Professor for Musik at the Klang Geräusch Academy of Arts Cologne, Teaching Theory and History of Sound.

In 2019 I learned from my friend Simon Charterton that Moore had moved to my home town of St Leonards. He and I have since been occasional guest performers in Charterton’s alt groove band Simon and the Pope.

On the eve of his appearance at a Club Integral night at Iklektik in Waterloo on March 10th, I caught up with Anthony Moore at his home in St Leonards.

 


KR:What are your earliest memories of exposure to music?

AM: My grandmother’s voluminous contralto – a great big wobbling jelly of sound to my 2 year old ears – and making crystal sets in the 50s, Bakelite headphones… followed later, thanks to my father’s peripatetic journeying, by the squawks of short wave transistor radio, BBC world service’s Lilliburlero – we lived in Cyprus in the 50’s and Africa in the very early 60s (that means the airwaves were flooded by Arabic, Turkish, Armenian, Greek and African music too).

When did you realise that music was going to be your life? Did you
try any other occupation?

A brief stint at art school in St Albans and Newcastle (yes, I’m another bleeding 60s art-school drop-out), but growing up in the 60s meant it was always going to be music. With that insouciance of 60s youth I never considered another job – being prepared to crash on floors, have no sense of the future and being ridiculously self-centred.

When did you first work on scores for experimental films? How did this come about?

The first filmscore was for David Larcher’s “Mare’s Tail” – 150 minutes of non-narrative and extremely poetic imagery. But there was no ‘score’ as such. With the small budget we decided to purchase a number of old tape recorders, Brenells, Ferrographs, an early Nagra… This allowed me to multitrack, overdub, loop, splice, change speed and pitch and reverse sound material that was sourced
from field recordings, old upright piano frames, penny whistles, what have you. The crucial point being that with ribbons of magnetic tape you find yourself as a musician using the identical techniques that experimental film makers applied to ribbons of
celluloid. The connection between image and sound is therefore established through the technology and how you use it rather than through any ‘mickey mousing’ or illustration of the image.

What were the connections between Faust and Slapp Happy?

Uwe Nettelbeck. He had discovered the seedling Faust, installed them in a small country school house somewhere North of Hamburg and built them an 8 track recording studio to live and play in. Uwe also edited a well-known magazine called ‘Filmkritik’. By 1969 I was living in Hamburg and making the soundtracks for a number of underground movies which got shown in various festivals. Uwe saw these
films, was into the music that accompanied them and got me a deal with Polygram to record 3 LPs – “Pieces From The Cloudland Ballroom”, “Secrets of The Blue Bag” and “Reed, Whistles & Sticks”. These were all minimalist, instrumental works and on their completion he asked if I might be prepared to make an album of songs. I contacted Peter Blegvad and having met Dagmar Krause, Slapp Happy was born. We went up to Wumme where Faust were living and working, and as we had no rhythm section of our own it was a happy and natural marriage with the Faust gang that allowed us to make two Slapp Happy LPs in their studio. Later in 1972 both bands signed up with Virgin Records.

You were unceremoniously dumped by Virgin Records just prior to the
original release date for Out, in the mid 1970s [Out is available now on Drag City or via Bandcamp]. How and why did this come about?

It’s a mystery, frankly. The LP was already finished and mastered; even the artwork was complete – a cover designed by Storm at Hipgnosis. It was 1975/6. The lawyers and accountants were moving into the music business – I guess I was too weird for them… or at least lacked a sufficiently focused and aggressive ambition to be commercially successful. Oh well…

What is your understanding of the basic principles of experimental music, and what role or function does it play or serve?

I think, however naive it might seem, freedom in a broad sense has a lot to do with it: a rejection of conformity: an ego-less acceptance of chance and to be unafraid to fail. There is also a satisfying if reactionary joy in confounding those same
‘accountants and lawyers’ just referred to. They (the principles) may also make no sense; but I have always thought that nonsense is what separates us from the animals.

You’ve worked on a number of projects involving other artists across
 a variety of genres, and in different roles, as lyricist, producer, and
 so on. Which for you was the most intriguing and/or most baffling?

I probably take collaborating with others too seriously. I like to work to deadlines and I do find it useful to feel under some kind of obligation; to have to keep promises. It’s very helpful in the unframed drift of my daily weekly monthly yearly life.
Unsurprisingly, the most intriguing is the unpredictable, the live work, performing; most baffling, and it’s why I don’t do it so much anymore, is the grind of writing.

You worked for a number of years teaching at the Academy of the Arts
in Cologne. How do you think this might have compared to a similar role here in the UK?

I landed an unbelievably fortunate position in Cologne. I was handed the outrageous freedom to teach what I didn’t know. This allowed the opening up of new horizons for me personally, and the golden opportunity to learn with diverse and exceptional students about myriad things in the realm of sound, music and noise; not least its ancient history, its connection to technology and society, to mathematics and physics, and to art – 20 years of pure adventure! I don’t think that could have happened anywhere else. The only minor downside was a slight lacuna in the output of my own material. But there were advantages to this too, as I mention later.

Electronics in music have gone from being a marginal force in music in the
 mid 20th century to occupying a significant place in the current
mainstream. What do you think are the triumphs and what are the
 drawbacks in respect of this? What has been gained and what has been
 lost?

I can’t really answer this as I am not sure what constitutes ‘mainstream’ and ‘electronics’. It would be easier for me to at least put forward my personal view on the effect of ‘accountants and lawyers’ on the nature of songwriting. I sorely miss the
inventiveness of Brian Wilson and The Beatles… but that’s just an old bloke moaning, probably.

What projects are you currently working on?

Prior to Cologne which ran from 1995 to 2015, I saw myself very much as a studio animal crawling around the floors of windowless rooms with half a dozen patch cables round my neck – happy as a pig in the proverbial. I loved machines, especially tape recorders. Whilst I ceased making much of my own music in Cologne it nevertheless presented me with an unexpected plus. Pontificating in
lectures, conferences and workshops pretty much weekly got me out of the windowless rooms with their engines of production, and into the world of live performance, i.e. teaching. As a consequence, what I am doing these days is grabbing every opportunity to get up and make a fool of myself in public. It’s a great privilege to start a new chapter at the end of the book.

https://reflectionsonsound.bandcamp.com/

https://iklectikartlab.com/club-integral-8/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Moore

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SAUSAGE 261

Posted on 4 March, 2023 by Editor

Bird Guano’s
SAUSAGE LIFE
The column which believes that what you lack in empathy you can more than make up for in spiteful malice  

MYSELF:  Why the short face? 
READER: I’m so excited I can hardly wait! I’ve just taken out a subscription to Sky TV’s dedicated F1 channel which broadcasts motor racing all day long.
MYSELF: Ah, bliss, what could be sweeter than the sound of a million terrified bees flying around in circles in an underground cave.
READER: You’re just a motor-racist. As a fully paid up petrol-head I will be able to watch every single race in the F1 season! And then on top of that there will be expert studio pundits conducting in-depth interviews with all the drivers!
MYSELF:  Towering intellects every one of them.
READER: I give up. Frankly you just don’t know what you’re missing.
MYSELF:  Frankfully, I do not. I’m amazed though, that you can afford to fork out so much money when you clearly have such a lot of time on your hands.
READER: I work from home.

 

RETAIL THERAPY NEWS
Cornelius Swettshop, CEO of Swetshop Garments Ltd who is also chairman of The Institute for The Institution of the Ethical Institute of Business Research Group (UK), attended the official opening of Upper Dicker’s latest retail outlet, Bashful Narcissus earlier this month. Its brightly coloured stock originates from Swettshop’s factory in Bangladesh where abandoned orphans are employed to manufacture fast fashion garments from Polymorphyloid Asbestolene, a highly inflammable petroleum derivative which glows in the dark. A spokesperson for Bashful Narcissus explained: “All of Swettshop’s fast fashion line is completely disposable and must be discarded immediately after wearing, as exposure to soapy water tends to make them dangerously toxic and liable to cause hallucinations.”
Eileen Dodds, an unemployed waitress of Lower Pillhook spent the night in a sleeping bag outside Bashful Narcissus, ready to pounce on an opening day bargain as soon as Hastings’ Lord Mayor the Right Worshipful Derek Windfarm cut the ribbon at 9am.
“It was well worth the overnight stay on a freezing cold pavement smelling of urine in order to be first in the queue.” she declared, “It’s practically impossible to buy proper disposable clothes where I live, it’s all wool and cotton, which is so last year. I have been forced to wash clothes for the last twelve months,” she complained, “instead of being able to dump them in a lay-bye late at night, next to a recycling point”.
Eileen proudly showed me the huge lead-lined designer bag (£20) containing dresses, tops and accessories she had purchased from Bashful Narcissus that morning, adding: “I have spent well over £12 on cheap, garish items of clothing today, all of which I fully intend to throw away the minute they are unwrapped.”

ASK DR. GUANO
Unqualified medical advice for the devil-may-care

Dear Dr Guano,
My teenage son has taken to wearing a revolting brand of cologne, in what I take to be a desperate bid for sophistication and peer acceptance. Odour du Mal, by Revenge, has a particularly rank smell, reminiscent of cat-tray mixed with rancid goat’s cheese, producing an acrid stench which has a particularly stimulating effect on the projectile vomit reflex. As is the nature of adolescent rebellion, the more I go on about it, the less inclined he is to stop applying it to his body. What am I to do?
Ivy Poisson,
Dungsaddling

Dear Ivy,
What you describe is a typical adolescent desire to smell terrible, which he will grow out of for a few of his adult years before reverting to type. Until then, you can temporarily stem the odorous tide using this method: In a large barrel, combine two kilos of horse manure with five litres of ammonia. Add four drops of concentrated methane hydrochloride and stir. When the mixture has stopped bubbling, with the help your husband, remove the boy from his bed, and without waking him, dip him head first into the barrel. The offending smell should disappear within 4 to 5 days, along with his hair and eyelids. Regretfully, I am not an NHS doctor, so that will be £150.
Dr Guano 

FORK BREXIT
Fake magician plans to scupper new Irish/EU deal using telepathy 

Uri Geller, the spoon bending charlatan and fake psychic is appealing to the British public to help him influence what he considers to be the Prime Minister’s watering down of Brexit, by sending telepathic messages directly to Rishi Sunak’s brain. In a letter to the PM, reportedly written using an ordinary non-psychic pen, he has warned that he intends to employ his special powers to prevent the UK from “collaborating with the EU”. His plan is to harness and transmit psychic energy into Sunak’s brain twice a day from a secret location (42a, Nostradamus Crescent, Chipping Norton) at 11.11am and 11.11pm (“a very mystical time” according to Geller). The tableware-menacing windbag will visualise the PM signing a document revoking the Good Friday agreement.  He may also project a mental image of Mr Sunak wearing a diaphanous pink negligée and thigh length kitten-heel boots – but this, he says, is his “second choice”.
 “What a lot of people are unaware of”, continued the grinning guru of gullibility, “is that if we allow Northern Ireland to continue trading with the EU, we will be forced under WTO rules to import cheap, unbendable cutlery from Romania, which, let’s face it, is half my act ruined”.
He claims that he had already successfully penetrated Mr. Sunak (psychically speaking) after visiting his palatial home when he was merely Chancellor of the Exchequer. “Once inside, I simply projected positive thoughts, wrote out an invoice and bingo! “ he bragged, “Within months he became Prime Minister. Although he was very grateful, he later sent me a bill for ruining his Vera Wang silverware”.

 

Sausage Life!

Click image to connect. Alice’s Crazy Moon is an offbeat monthly podcast hosted by Alice Platt (BBC, Soho Radio) with the help of roaming reporter Bird Guano a.k.a Colin Gibson (Comic Strip Presents, Sausage Life). Each episode will centre around a different topic chosen by YOU the listener! The show is eclectic mix of music, facts about the artists and songs and a number of surrealistic and bizarre phone-ins and commercials from Bird Guano. Not forgetting everyones favourite poet, Big Pillow!

NB: IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PAID SUBSCRIPTION TO SPOTIFY, THE SONGS WILL BE OF RESTRICTED LENGTH

https://vimeo.com/user129836501https://vimeo.com/user129836501

 

https://vimeo.com/user129836501

 



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Ukraine : let’s mind our own business !

Posted on 25 February, 2023 by Editor

Here’s a gun.  Take it.  Use it on your foes.
(How many dead on your side no one knows)
Defend your towns (which now are shards and stubble,
Your great cathedrals turned to smoking rubble)
Worry not though : if you remain alive
You’re sure to win and freedom will survive.
No Surrender is not bold enough
No Negotiations is the Right Stuff !
We’re happy to provide weapons galore 
If you lose some we’ll give you plenty more
Our well-trained workforce famous for their skill
Are now obliged to make machines that kill
Or lose their jobs and join The Others, those
Ill housed ill fed forced to wear cast-off clothes.
Is there no waking from this man-made nightmare ?
There is !  If we direct our money where
It can assuage the anguish here at home
And while we care for our unhappy own
Our allies overseas will do their part
Replacing ill-will with a change of heart
So if we mind our business and they theirs 
Posterity will bless us as their heirs.

 

Robert Ilson

 

 

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Marcus Aurelius ‘Inside Knowledge’

Posted on 25 February, 2023 by Bernard Saint

 

Once in Babylon there reigned
A King who built a Labyrinth   –
It was a marvel of the ancient world

He eliminated secretly its architect designers
That he alone possess the arcane knowledge
Concerning its guile and powers of alienation

One day a desert nomad visiting the city
Was tricked to be the ‘fly’ to test this ‘web’   –
And there for days demoralised he wandered

Until in despair he called on his soul’s creator   –
By this intimacy his intuition guided
As if invisible angels led him to the exit   –

The King a-mazed   –   the nomad then addressed him
With quiet dignity   ‘One day
I a humble desert man will help you…

…And you perhaps may try my labyrinth   –   the wild Sahara’   – 
For there within his wars the King was captured   –
But the nomad set him free to fare for home

He wandered in a circle wide and then a circle small
King of his own cosmos he had never felt the need
To contemplate the guiding stars nor make a compass of compassion

So he circled and spiralled
Down like a stricken fly
Before it drops and dies

 

 

 

Bernard Saint
Illustration: Claire Palmer

 

 

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We Became Afraid

Posted on 25 February, 2023 by David Erdos
 
 
Captured by cold, England, or so we are told,
Ices over. That at least is the forecast, too often wrong,
 
Over us. It has been predicted for March.
Apparently, we have about a week to win
 
Sunlight’s favour, before we are to be held down
Within households like the Lockdown of old’s
 
Transformations, which if you remember, barred
Open windows and granted every door its own crust.
 
Doubtless, this is the corrupted world biting back;
Mother Nature’s mood freshly vengeful,
 
Or the Alien God’s practised playing with the snow-globe
Of the Earth it has spurned. So there could yet be much
 
To fear; imprisoned pensioners, cracking pipes, 
A rise in bills, short resources. Grass as glass,
 
While each garden starts forgetting the things
Seasons learn. To me, it is a matter of the world leaning in. 
 
And it is such a delicate balance. Last night, I watched
A DVD with that title: Edward Albee’s classic play.
 
And in its finest iteration I think, with Kates’ Reid
And Hepburn, Betsy Blair, Joseph Cotten,
 
And the exquisite Lee Remick, dead for so long,
Gifting day. This film of the play is probably the finest
 
Example of acting – outside of Ronnie Barker’s Fletcher – 
Particularly from these players, but mostly for me,
 
From its star, who is not Katherine Hepburn at all,
But the discreetly majestic Paul Scofield; that man
 
For all seasons who wore reason and truth like waxed
Scars. His immaculately lined face said it all. His presence
 
And poise were pure angel. With Scofield around
All was dealt with, was questioned and solved
 
And worked through. The play is about the fine line
Behind which we’re all falling. It is about family hatred
 
And friendship’s distance which no amount of time
Can make true. The characters of Tobias and Agnes
 
Receive a series of dark visitations, first from Claire,
Her sister and who is stirring her pain in each drink.
 
And then their daughter, Remick’s Julia, leaving her
Fourth marriage behind her. Hepburn’s gimlet eye
 
Seems to stab her, as melancholy moves this woman-child
To the brink. Henry and Edna arrive, existentially scared
 
By the silence which has been patterning their behaviour,
And clogging like gas their intent. Which is to feed off
 
Their friends, as parasitical perhaps as their daughter.
‘We became afraid’ Henry tells them with a bloodless face
 
And expression that is as chilling as the cold front to come
And heart-wrent. The strangeness of others is seen
 
As past and pose lose all power; the delicate balance
Between them, which Tobias maintains thin as flakes,
 
Predicted to fall any day,  as if an uncaring sky wept
Whipped wisdom. For hale cuts and ice slices and snow
 
Can numb as pipes quake. When we are affronted,
What stays that we can fall back on? When we are alone,
 
To whose comfort can we finally turn at this stage?
By which I mean today as well as this Play
 
And your vintage.  And indeed, which wine will be worthy
To win you over and possibly stain your own page?
 
Tobias drinks Anisette.  A sticky liquer found in Tescos.
But in Albee’s alfresco of fright and alarm, its Paul’s prize.
 
His near animal brow takes all in. His was a face like no other.
His voice was the ocean through which the Mayor of Atlantis
 
Sings still. His voice was whalesong and wind, cloud and deep
Echo chamber. God was made in his image: beautiful and benigh.
 
Each look thrills. We all should have his magic. We don’t.
He made acting Art. Scofield guides me. And in the fears to come
 
Around weather, or the advancing years I know this.
That a play of this stamp, from which the delivery of truth is near
 
Cosmic, is in its own way Atlantis, rising not from the deep,
But God’s kiss. Or whatever God is. Astral Grey. Santa. Woman.
 
Last night, that DVD was my bible. And Scofield my Christ.
Seek your bliss. And let it warm you, my friends.
 
For a second ice-age is coming. If not in March then the future
When the world we have wrought is Tippexed.
 
Which we  don’t even use anymore; a substance
That former Monkee Mike Nesmith’s mother invented.
 
Suddenly, paper was water, as white as the snow coming next.
So from Monkee Mother to Ape, bypassing us, straight to dolphin,
 
To bacteria, cockroach, to each mushroom and cell which survives;
The rumbles to come should remind of our fragile hold on all places.
 
We need more Scofield like faces to warm, assess and assize.
 
Then we’d thrive.
 
 
 
 
 
                                                                        David Erdos 23/2/23   
 
 
 
 
 
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TELL ME WHY?

Posted on 25 February, 2023 by Editor

 

Why I feel sometimes that…….

I am the saree
Wrapped around your curvaceous waist,
Whenever you tie and drape it
You look beautiful.

I am the bangles
Revolving on your slim wrist,
With each tinkle of those
I find the entire world coming to rest.

I am mascara
Bordering around your eyelashes,
With each blinking of your eyes
I just expand your flashes

I am the bindi
On your forehead,
Each time you face the mirror
I focus all over your shade.

I am the lipstick
Spread on your lips,
Every time you move them
I do nothing but lick.

I am the nose ring
Shining on your nose,
With each warm breath
I find you are sparkling.

I am the earring
Dancing on the lobes,
No sooner do you sway
Than a shy dove captures.

I am the garland
Spun on your long hair,
With each jostle of its bun
I find my universe.

Why I feel sometimes that……
Tell me why?

 

 

 

 

 

Bio:- Monalisa Parida is a post graduate student of English literature from India, Odisha and a prolific poetess. She is very active in social media platforms and her poems have also been translated into different languages and publish in various e-journals.
She has got 100 international awards for writing poetry. Her poems have been publishing international e-journals “New York parrot”, “The Writers Club” (USA), “Suriyadoya literary foundation”, “kabita Minar”, “Indian Periodical” (India) and “Offline Thinker “, “The Gorkha Times “ ( Nepal), “The Light House”(Portugal), “Bharatvision”(Romania), “International cultural forum for humanity and creativity”(Aleppo, Syria), “Atunispoetry.com”(Singapore) etc. And also published in various newspapers like “The Punjabi Writer Weekly(USA)”, “News Kashmir (J&K, India)”, Republic of Sungurlu (Turkey)” etc.
One of her poem published an American anthology named “The Literary Parrot Series-1 and series-2 respectively (New York, USA)”. Her poems have been translated in various languages like Hindi, Bengali, Turkish, Persian, Romanian etc. And she is the author of the book “Search For Serenity”, “My Favourite Grammar”, “Paradigm”, “Beyond Gorgeous”.

 

 

 

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Techno-Idiot

Posted on 25 February, 2023 by Editor

memorized the periodic table for years
titanium – lithium – aluminum
decades turning that Rubik’s cube
color coded manipulation
television taught me
humans & machines
merged into borg
automobiles & telephones
track my every morning move
have I morphed
into a data gatherer
for computers
earthling or alien
a mere drone
awaiting Hal

 

 

 

 

Words and picture
TERRENCE SYKES

 

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A story in which nothing happens

Posted on 25 February, 2023 by Editor

If I tell you that nothing happens in this story, will you believe it? Or will you suspect me of playing a trick and read on? The text obviously continues, you can see it in front of you, filling part of the page. Surely it must describe something, narrate some kind of event? Why else would I have composed these sentences and arranged them in a particular sequence? Why call it a story? The piece is short, but it might still work its way round to mention a chance encounter with an ex-lover which leads nowhere, or describe a bizarre ritual involving stuffed otters, or offer a brief psychoanalytic interpretation of the author’s apparent laziness, though this looks unlikely with the end rapidly coming into view. But even if none of these scenarios are going to feature in this story, there is still, as you will be aware, a small amount of text remaining, and surely there will be some kind of twist. You deserve that at least, having read this far, despite my opening avowal. Some sort of denouement, a final surprise, even at this late stage.

 

Simon Collings

 

 

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Dog, Duck, Deer

Posted on 25 February, 2023 by Editor

        

Rain hisses, effervesces paws, slows
you a dog in mid-street. You also the duck
paddles harder, harder on a medium
lake appears a great chunked sea. Yet you
not the deer nibbles green shrub tips but
are the one, observing, holds your breath, and also
on a daylight city walk almost bumps into Christine—
skeletal after 10 years, expressionless, who does
not see you hurrying away in sudden thick dark when
Left Big Toe meets a bedroom chair leg. You,
not big on thinks, just self with heartbeat,
in love with flesh, a bit scared like most.

 

George Shelton

 

 

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Cutting Through the Skin

Posted on 25 February, 2023 by Editor

Are our inland river channels
being infiltrated? Reports of
people fleeing may be exagg-

erated but who are the real
authoritarians here? Decisions
are being taken at alarming

speed. “This is collecting on
an epic scale,” she said. At first
sight these production values

seem impressive but our internet
services are being shut down.
“One swift bite to the back of

the head and the spine is
shattered,” she said.   

 

 

Steve Spence

 

 

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THE ROYAL REACH

Posted on 25 February, 2023 by David Erdos

 

 

On Oddfellow Casino’s Prince of the Starry Wheel (2022)

 

Bramwell sashays in with sparkling synths and slick snare-struck shuffle 
Calling for the prince of soft regions made even moreso by stars
As fields and moorlands enchant and his angelic voice creates cosmos
In which the light that divides us is strong enough to seal scars.

Oddfellows Casino deals cards for all to grow lucky. What you feel
As you listen is this secret song of the heart, encompassing the sleeping giants
Who turn in this electro led ballad’s gold lyric, and the great elastic girl’s
Slow unwinding as she makes the straining for love its own art.

Bramwell’s songs mix the sweet where a writer like Neil Hannon stirred bitter.
His chansons are ecstatic and full of the majesty of the land. Nobody walks
Such terrain. Nobody sings of these subjects. Bramwells heart is bright flower
Emerging from stone, staining sand. Opening song Trespass gives way

To Ameland’s broken-heartache; its acoustic drive has synth screaming
As the singer turns and twists the dark wheel from despair into dream,
While gaining so much more than Neil Gaiman, as sonorous song signals fires
That the long lost and dead can still feel; ‘Whistle and I will run/

Through desert rains and winter sun/With a bruised heart I’ll come
And lay be down in the earth undone..’ Here is romance then,
And rhyme for those pressed into fragments. It is the song
Of the driftwood and of the gathered ghosts beneath piers.

But these are not Stanshall’s stinkfooted starfish.
These Saints are a part of the Bramwellian beauty.
For there is ache in the algae as every ruined wave
Brings back tears. Starlings have flown. Bramwell is birds.

They’re his emblem, and one can see him resplendent
In some past falconry. You see that soar in these songs
As you do across all his albums.  For even despairing
Dear Doctor David is teaching you different ways and means

To feel free. Last Orders at the shoulder of Mutton has force,
And is indeed music-meat, slamming down chords like some giant butcher,
While  elision led lines conjure Dylan by way of an ambient Tony Newley
Beamed in. Toby Visram’s drums power on, as Bramwell’s strings

And keys unlock meaning and the track trod becomes epic,
Combining each image which makes life as it is lived by most
Feel too thin. There is nothing fey to the folk that Oddfellows Casino
Is fond of, for there is march here and amble and so much more

Within stride. The Casino is both outside all known realms,
And part of a flame tamed place warm within us. His stare his sharp.
His sound soothing, as his reach and arms remain wide.  
Beware My Love The Autumn People slides through as the piano

Assumes its composure. Unravelling synth and percussion
Storytell us all into place. As a forgotten people emerge
From Alan Garner’s ground like ghost cattle and one can see
How dew’s vapour is both the beard and the breath on each face.

‘The strangest days are the best,’ Bramwell sings, and in his
Spell-like swirl we live through them. The song is a spiral,
And incantation too; a time test. It mesmerises, enchants
And also disturbs at odd moments, in which every fellow,

Whether winning or not, sees fate crest. Summer Weaving
Has harps or what sounds like harps beside Bramwell.
His high, held voice becomes Robert’s as he traipses
And charts Wyatt’s trail, plotting a path free from jazz,

And with the avant-garde now retired, to make David B.
The defender of a spectacular air which can’t fail;
Free of our stains and the smear and stink of our present,
The rise and fall and chord sequence of this beautiful piece

Fuses us with the past and the pose of some  ancient Crusader
An Ingmar Bergman of England, his new seal now seeking
Simplicity through time’s fuss. Prince of the Starry Wheel
Is day stars and achieveable orbits. It is the royalty within us

Enraptured no doubt by a glimpse of something bright
And bold shining still beyond the  horizon. Bramwell’s spell
Reminds us that we have not seen the like of such, since.

Emily’s power pop pushes us to the very edge of disturbance.
It places steel in the fire in order to rear and rouse sparks.
It is a love song which steals the sensuality from the sacred
Bearing with it an anger for which Bramwell’s gentler refrains

Left no mark. His voice softens all while also allowing
For contrast, as the sharp circle of desire and loss shapes
The dark. The Quiet Man And His Dutch Wife enthrals.
Bramwell is at his best with these titles. This one male

Voice choir and softly nudging notes novels on.
For like his books, his records reveal deeper stories.
He is a writer, sound-maker and cineaste within song.
And he guides his guests well, from Visram’s Drums,

To Rachel James on soft vocals. To Teresa Gilles’ special
String colours; Ali Strachan on Cornet’s skilled carving,
And Emma Papper’s texture and detail thanks to her
Clarinet. The instrumentation extends Bramwell’s

Sonic system, and a vocoder lile wah-wah well well
In this concluding track is inspired as the cornet’s
Theme lifts and angels in ways no listener can forget.
The Oddfellow observes the legends of England

His musical path is a lesson that no other singer I know
Can quite reach. For there is majesty here. And a king
In the ear. So Princesses, Queens and Commanders,
Stay attendant at court. Let sound teach.

                                                                      

 

                                              David Erdos 24/2/23 

 

https://oddfellowscasino.bandcamp.com/album/prince-of-the-starry-wheel

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The 9th studio release from Oddfellow’s is an album of earth, feet, marches, burials and the passing of time. It takes its title from one of William Blake’s many colourful names for Isaac Newton and belies the record’s themes of our relationship with the the ground below our feet, from land rights  and protest to the earth as our final resting place. The opening track – and single – was inspired by Nick Hayes’ The Book of Trespass, and is a passionate call to arms for new land rights, paying tribute to the mass trespass of Kinder Scout in 1932 and the Greenham Common protests. It also features – with their blessings – the voices of author Nick Hayes and performance artist Lone Taxidermist. Elsewhere on the album is an electronic re-interpretation of Melanie’s 1972 song Summer Weaving; a psychogeographical journey from the Suffolk coast to a remote Dutch island in the track Ameland, the breezy Pixies-esque Emily and the twelve minute epic, Beware My Love the Autumn People which, lyrically, jumps from the horror-writings of Ray Bradbury to themes of loss and the landscapes of Sussex.

The album ends with The Quiet Man and his Dutch Wife, a drastic re-working of a track from 2002’s Yellow-Bellied Wonderland, that finally explodes with the mantra, ‘we all wake up at the end of the world.’

The album is dedicated to Dave Mounfield, close friend of the band and best-known for his roles as Geoffrey and landlord Jack in BBC Radio 4’s Count Arthur Strong’s Radio Show.

Listen to my new podcast series
Adventures in Nutopia  
 
Doings
www.drbramwell.com
 
Music
Oddfellow’s Casino
 
Latest Book 
The Cult of Water
 
 
 
 
 
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Capital 

Posted on 25 February, 2023 by Kushal Poddar

The old man stares at the already tobacco hued
patches as he slowly releases his pain. Monday. 
On the occasion of the Independence Day
they have painted the public urinals in Tiffany blue. 
Now it is a patchwork of high and low, taste and
distaste, blood and void. Old eyes follow the line of ruins.
The white ants eat his nerves. Sun streams out.
His fingers fist around his reality. The market stretches
and curls one final time before unboxing the thick and thin
of capital. 

 

 

 

 

Kushal Poddar
Picture Nick Victor

Kushal Poddar lives in Kolkata, India

@amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
 Author Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/ 
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

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Aircooled and Miki Berenyi Trio at The Trades

Posted on 25 February, 2023 by Editor

 

Musings and pic-taking from Alan Dearling

At a risk of sounding a bit like a judge at Crufts, the Trades Club in Hebden last night hosted an array of musicians with fine ‘pedigrees’! The Trades Club is steeped in music histories. A socialist co-operative club, an upstairs music venue and bar, complete with Thai food, real ales and more at reasonable prices. Artists who have performed there include Patti Smith, The Fall, Laura Marling, Steve Hillage and Gaudi. I’ve been lucky enough to see a number of the mostly fabulous gigs there.

Here’s a pretty fair assessment of the place from a post on-line from Chas Birch:

“I grew up in Hebden. Can’t really begin to describe to you what that was like. Only that it was one hell of a place back then. I worked at Aurora Wholefoods and was so very fortunate to know some incredible people. Pretty much all of them used to gravitate to The Hebden Bridge Trades — it was the very CENTRE OF THE EARTH as it was host to many LEGENDARY ARTISTS & MUSICIANS (and it continues to attract incredible talent).  I wonder if there’s a record of all those who have played there, because it would blow your mind?!!   It’s not without its flaws but that’s part of its charm and for a real GENUINE MUSIC EXPERIENCE, I can’t recommend the place highly enough!!”

A double-header music event.

First up, the Miki Berenyi Trio performing what Miki called “A sort of K-Tel compilation of songs from Lush”. Then, headlining, a newish outfit, Aircooled (members from Elastica, Jesus and Mary Chain, The Wedding Present and Piroshka and other bands) showcasing their debut album, ‘St Leopards’. A mighty pulsating, throbbing slice of mesmeric, vaguely Germanic electronic beats – shades of Neu!, Can and a shed-load of EDM.

Miki Berenyi Trio

Before the gig, Miki Berenyi  said, “I played some Lush songs with KJ ‘Moose’ McKillop and Oliver Cherer at book events for my memoir, ‘Fingers Crossed’ and enjoyed it so much that we’ve decided to extend our set. Expect new songs and old, and a ton of guitar pedals which we may or may not gaze at.”

 

I’m not a Lush aficionado. Formed in 1987, they are often characterised as the original ‘shoegazers’! I just recognised some of the songs and the Lush ‘sound’. It’s kind of doomy, with a heavy, distorted bass undertow, underpinning Miki’s half-whispered vocalising style. I have listened to many recordings from 4AD artists such as the Cocteau Twins. Lush music seems to feel like a link between Siouxsie and the Banshees, Throwing Muses, This Mortal Coil and Dead Can Dance. Ethereal walls of ululating sound. There were certainly swathes of stalwart fans in the Trades’ audience, many swaying and humming along. Miki was up front and personal with the audience, making such comments at the end of one song: “That was an obscure Lush B-side…No, actually it’s a new song, but if I told you that, you’d all fuck off to the bar.”

 

‘Desire Lines’ live in the US, on KCRW in 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiP9e4UDQFs

Aircooled

Wow! Quite a sound and presence. Swirling electronica… Persistent, driving, incendiary beats – screeching sounds. On the edge of frightening off-kilter darkness and dread. Militaristic beats. Dance Music – not Dance music. A Can-type of sound, but much more distorted. Here are Aircooled rehearsing their track ‘Supamoto-disco’ from their debut album, very recently: 4/3/22. Perhaps Japanese kraut-rock?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRSgOb6inyM

I can’t help conjuring up the Dr Who theme fronted by a deranged Laurie Anderson. Wonderful, eerie and strange. It’s mostly instrumental, a big sound, and really very original. The machine-gun sounds made by electro-plasms (whatever they might be)!

From their press release, we learn that, “The debut album, St Leopards started life as a lockdown project and features four tracks, two of which break 14 minutes.  You’ll hear the influence of bands like Neu! and Amon Duul but with a bit of disco-glam swagger reminiscent of Le Crunch and the Ballroom Blitz.

The addition of Katharine’s no nonsense, so solid bass for live shows triggered the band’s explosion into something altogether more vital and exciting. The first few packed shows, featuring guest stars, extended motor grooves and disco blitz have achieved ‘I was there!’ status among those that truly were there (and some that weren’t).”

St Leopards is out now on Music’s Not Dead.

AIRCOOLED are:

Justin Welch – drums/programming [JAMC, Piroshka, Elastica etc.]
Katharine Wallinger – bass  [The Wedding Present]
Oliver Cherer – guitar/keys [Gilroy Mere, Piroshka]
Riz Maslen – occasional vocals [Neotropic]
Mew – occasional vocals/keys and album artwork [Elastica]

After the gig, Oliver, who played with both bands messaged me saying:

“Cheers Alan. Really glad you enjoyed it and thanks for the fab pics. I think we made friends in that room. We all loved it.”

 

 

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CANDY

Posted on 25 February, 2023 by Editor


 
We stare out the window for uncounted hours
Because we sense we have unused powers.
 
Then Candy comes in with a bottle of Scotch
And things all at once brighten up a notch.
 
If Scott came in with a bag of candy
That too would be pleasant but somehow less handy.

 

 

 

© Mark Halliday & Martin Stannard, 2023
 
 
 

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O, DEMOCRACY

Posted on 25 February, 2023 by Editor

The festival procession of spectators attends the Assembly and Sceptre debates on conditions and consequence, on revenues and revenge, while, to mend the pending amendments, the skepticals invoke their rituals to raise the specters of their freedomophile brethren and children.

 

Duane Vorhees

 

 

 

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