Tune Of The Week - The Andrew Lansley Rap

Quite brilliant - if this was available on iTunes, it would be massive:

Captain Ska Tries To Emulate Rage Against The Machine's Success

In the absence of a better idea, it's often tempting to repeat the same tactic again and again. That has certainly been the approach adopted by the Stop the War Coalition over the years.

The plans to 'kettle' Scotland Yard tomorrow at 1pm, in protest at the injuries sustained by Alfie Meadows at last week's student demonstration, is another case in point. It's essentially a repeat of a similar stunt by the United Campaign Against Police Violence in May 2009, one that wasn't exactly successful when it was tried the first time after the death of Ian Tomlinson. So let's see whether the latest attempt to emulate Rage Against The Machine's crushing of last year's X-Factor winner has more success. Launched yesterday, the anti-government 'Liar Liar' by Captain Ska hopes to challenge some insipid non-entity called Matt Cardle, who apparently won the X-Factor final yesterday, for the 'coveted' Christmas number 1 single.

'Liar Liar' is available as a download from iTunes and perhaps, as RATM guitarist Tom Morello said last year, it too can tap "into the silent majority of the people in the UK who are tired of being spoon-fed one schmaltzy ballad after another". Lacking RATM's considerable fan base, I have my doubts that Captain Ska will have the same impact and it seems a lot like repeating the same tactic for want of a better idea.

But it's worth a try and spending 79 pence to publicise the campaign against government cuts, as well as the chance to infuriate Simon Cowell for a second year, seems like a small price to pay.

UPDATE

As expected - the single didn't even make it into the Top 40 (it came in at a poor 89th)

Plastic State Of Mind

Atheists Don't Have No Songs

Steve Martin & the Steep Canyon Rangers perform Martin's original a capella 'gospel' tune at this year's Austin City Limits for the non-believers among us.

And The Choir Sang Creep

Now I know this is seriously random, even for me. There's a film out In October called The Social Network, which is about the staggeringly dull subject of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. It's directed by Fight Club's David Fincher and Zuckerberg is played by Jesse Eisenberg, who was the lead in Zombieland.

The trailer, though, has one saving grace: a version of the Radiohead song 'Creep', sung by a Belgian girls' choir conducted by Stijn Kolacny, with his brother Steven Kolacny on the piano. There's another (non-sanitised, 'fucking special' instead of 'very special') choral version here, but by far the best (and saddest) video is this, a different cover by Sweden's Vega Choir.

Apparently choral versions of pop songs are a musical genre in their own right - who knew? But anyway, more proof that even an atheist like me can sometimes recognise that the religious (in this case the Lutherans) can take something great and make it sound amazingly beautiful. Enjoy.

Fifteen Albums That Stick With You

My friend and comrade Harpymarx has a knack for spotting Internet memes and this is a particularly fun one - fifteen albums that will always stick with you, one album per band, with no more than fifteen minutes to make the selection.

Her choices are here. After finally making it home after a long, long day, I sat down with a notebook and pen (very old-school) and found it surprisingly easy to choose fifteen albums that each have a personal meaning to me. Explaining why has taken rather longer, but here are my choices, in release-date order:

The Jam - Setting Sons (1979)
I was only just starting secondary school when Setting Sons came out and was therefore a late starter as a fan of the Jam (this was their fourth album). Paul Weller was undoubtedly the coolest musician of the period and the album remains one of my all-time favourites, one I still listen to regularly. Heat Wave (a Martha and the Vandellas cover) is an odd and rather pointless final track though.

Favourite tracks: Eton Rifles, Smithers-Jones

Heaven 17 – Penthouse and Pavement (1981)
This was such an iconic album from my early school years, with the overtly political (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang an obvious hook for a young lefty (it was banned by Radio 1's resident censor Mike Read). Heaven 17 were also, however, responsible for teenage boys wearing ridiculous little pony-tails and dressing like aspiring yuppies. Remember collar pins with burgundy ties?


Favourite tracks: (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang, Geisha Boys and Temple Girls, The Height of the Fighting

Special AKA – In The Studio (1984)
This was the third album by the Specials and I can remember exactly where I bought it: in a long-disappeared record shop in Haywards Heath in Sussex, a year after its release. This is the album that includes the decade's finest political anthem, Free Nelson Mandela, a track I particularly enjoyed playing when relatives from South Africa were visiting (along with sticking a massive ANC flag on my bedroom door). Seeing the song performed at the end of an Anti-Apartheid Movement protest in London was fantastic.

Favourite tracks: Free Nelson Mandela, Racist Friend

The Smiths – Meat Is Murder (1985)
Inevitabky, I became a Smiths fan long after the truly dedicated has spent a fortune on gladioli and this album was the soundtrack of my first year at polytechnic, nearly two years after its release. To be fair, this was mainly because I was too skint to buy LPs (What Difference Does It Make? had been a favourite single when it was released in 1984, but that never grew into a fully-blown Morrissey obsession). The politics of Meat is Murder naturally appealed to plenty of other stereotypical vegetarian student left wingers - I was one such archetype - but even so, there's little doubt that How Soon Is Now? is one of the greatest tracks of all time.

Favourite tracks: How Soon Is Now?, What She Said, That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

The Redskins - Neither Washington Nor Moscow (1986)
The Redskins were the SWP's house band and it was inevitable, in the mid-80s, that it would be popular with anyone on the left. But I remember that everyone had this album (even my less political friends) and it was a staple of all-night teenage house parties of the period. Sampling Tony Cliff was pretty cheesy though and smacked of the kind of leader-worship I've always been suspicious of.

Favourite tracks: Lean On Me, Keep On Keepin' On

The Stone Roses – The Stone Roses (1989)
This was the album of my final year at college and in the condemned student block where I lived, on the Coventry Cross estate in Bromley-by-Bow, it blared out from every flat. A Friday night at the student union wouldn't have been complete without a load of pale white guys flailing around to I Am the Resurrection (this was before Fool's Gold taught everyone that moving their hips when they danced was perfectly acceptable).

Favourite tracks: I Wanna Be Adored, This Is the One, I Am the Resurrection

Oasis – Definitely Maybe (1994)
The first and definitely the best Oasis album, although I know others prefer (What's the Story) Morning Glory?. But Oasis were already well on their way to embracing their Beatles obsession by the release of their second LP, whilst this was the band when they still were at the stage of wanting to play loud, angry guitars and dream of one day becoming famous.


Favourite tracks: Supersonic, Rock 'n' Roll Star, Cigarettes & Alcohol

Nirvana – Unplugged in New York (1994)
I never got Nirvana when they became huge in 1991. A latecomer as ever, I was still caught up in the whole 'Madchester' hype on the release of Nevermind and it was the kind of thing that Johnny Edwards, the students' union president I shared an office with when I was a sabbatical officer, was into (along with the Pixies track Stormy Weather, which was on a permanent loop). But stripped of the noise, the MTV Unplugged session showed that Kurt Cobain was a great songwriter - and finally the penny dropped.

Favourite tracks: About a Girl, Polly, Something in the Way

Portishead – Dummy (1994)
I loved this album when it came out and played it over and over again. It's like the soundtrack to a particularly disturbing late-night European film. The whole 'trip-hop' scene largely passed me by (I am so desperately uncool) but Beth Gibbons' voice on Dummy was something special - and it still is, even despite the potentially career-destroying Mercury Music Prize it won in 1995.

Favourite tracks: Wandering Star, Sour Times, Glory Box

Pulp – Different Class (1995)
In 1995, Jarvis Cocker was a geek hero who could do no wrong. Common People was huge, the band's Glastonbury appearance that year has become the stuff of legend and Different Class was my favourite album, even though I seem to remember that it too won a Mercury Music Prize. There are plenty of great tracks but Bar Italia probably edges it as my favourite - more than once I was one of those who "can't go home and go to bed, because it hasn't worn off yet".

Favourite tracks: Mis-Shapes, Common People, Underwear, Bar Italia

Radiohead – OK Computer (1997)
This is my favourite Radiohead album, almost certainly because it's another that sounds like the score to a science-fiction film and because it stood apart from the rest of the 'Britpop' nonsense at the time. Referencing Chomsky, Douglas Adams and including a track originally written for Baz Luhrmann's brilliant Romeo + Juliet almost certainly helped too.

Favourite tracks: Paranoid Android, Karma Police, No Surprises


Blue Break Beats Volume 4 (1998)
A choice that I doubt anyone else would share, but this album has an particularly personal significance for me, as it was one that we played in my friend Gilly's car every morning on the way to work at INQUEST. It includes tracks that were later sampled by others, including Bob Dorough's original Three Is The Magic Number from 1973 (a song that Gilly and I both knew all the words to after listening to it day after day), which was used many years later by De La Soul. One of the tracks is also an amazing live performance of Woman of the Ghetto by Marlena Shaw. For some reason I played it repeatedly after Gilly died in 2007.

Favourite tracks: Beat Goes On (Buddy Rich), Three Is The Magic Number (Bob Dorough), Woman of the Ghetto (Marlena Shaw)

Leftfield – Rhythm and Stealth (1999)
This album reminds me of a particular period - when many of my close friends were organising Conscious Clubbing events as a way to mix getting blasted and dancing until the morning whilst also raising funds for our favourite causes. I can still vividly remember Phat Planet or Afrika Shox when they were dropped into one of the DJ sets (usually by Gilly again, who had his signature tracks). Still a great album and one I dig out when I need cheering up.

Favourite tracks: Phat Planet, Afrika Shox, Swords

DJ Marky – The Brazilian Job (2001)
Drum and Bass crept up on me slowly but I never could get into the harder, darker tracks. However, when the Movement album The Brazilian Job came out, I discovered something that I could listen to at home, not just dance to in a club. Brazilian drum and bass is music for the summer months and for partying on the beach, essentially - and LK would be on my list for Desert Island Discs.


Favourite tracks: Só Tinha Que Ser Com Voce, LK (Carolina Carol Bela), Sambassim

The Streets – A Grand Don't Come For Free (2004)
Mike Skinner's first album as The Streets was my first British garage purchase and is great, but A Grand Don't Come for Free is just brilliant - eleven tracks that sound even better if played from beginning to end. As friends know well, I love this album so much that Blinded by the Lights has been the ringtone on my mobile for six years now. Nothing Skinner has done since has been as good.

Favourite tracks: Blinded by the Lights, Fit But You Know It, Empty Cans

Germany v England - You Decide

Who wins? The Germans or Billy Bragg's English? You decide. Incidently, I think we know what Bragg will be watching this afternoon down at the Glastonbury festival and it's more likely to be that other contest between two allegedly rival nations than Norah Jones on the Pyramid stage. Billy's website even sells a World Cup t-shirt for fashionably left-wing England fans.

Anyway, as the Russians didn't qualify this year and the French have departed early, here's the two drawn today from the Internationale sweepstake - hat-tip to Liam for finding the German team. My guess is that it will go to penalities.

The Sound of Silence

My Mum and Dad are stuck (albeit very comfortably and with no great hurry to return) in Madeira, waiting to hear when they can get a flight home. Loads of other people are experiencing problems due to the shutdown of UK airspace. But this is dedicated to Londoners who live near Heathrow, London City and Gatwick airports. We should enjoy it while we can.

Nelson Mandela - Twenty Seven Years In Captivity

Sunday 11 February 1990 saw one of the defining moments for those of us who first discovered activism in the grim years of the eighties - the release of Nelson Mandela from prison.

I'll be curious to see whether Tory leader David Cameron sends a message of congratulation today - as the Independent reported last year, in 1989 he accepted an all-expenses paid trip to apartheid South Africa, funded by a firm that lobbied against the imposition of sanctions on the racist regime. That was back when the Conservative Party described the ANC as a terrorist organisation - and Speaker of the Commons John Bercow was Chair of the Federation of Conservative Students and would regularly sell Hang Mandela t-shirts and posters.

There is, of course, only one choice of music to celebrate today's twentieth anniversary of that day: with The Special AKA's classic top-ten hit from 1984, "Free Nelson Mandela" - still one of the best protest songs of modern times.

YouTube has, for some reason, disabled embedding of the video since this morning, but you can find it here.

Cameron's Common People

For more posters see mydavidcameron.com. I'm actually quite impressed by the Shat's version of 'Common People' !

LAZY FRIDAY - Oui 3 from '93

It seems like such a long time ago now, but think back to 1993.

John Major was in Downing Street, terrorism meant the Bishopsgate bombing but we weren't yet at war with a noun, whilst the fact that the BNP had won their very first council seat in the Isle of Dogs was unusual enough to make front page news in the Evening Standard (I still have a copy) and we were still getting used to something called Microsoft Windows 3.1.

The final invasion of Iraq was still a decade away and several activists I know were still at junior school.

Meanwhile in the UK charts, there was a now obscure band called Oui 3 that had a couple of hits that I loved - Break From The Old Routine and the Buffalo Springfield sampled For What It's Worth.

In another Friday lunchtime distraction - and celebrate that this is the 500th post on my blog - I've tracked down both tracks for your listening pleasure:

Concert for Haiti - This Wednesday

The TUC-sponsored Concert for Haiti takes place this week on

Wednesday
3rd February
7pm – late
(doors open 6.30pm)

Congress House, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS | Tickets: £10

Featuring Son Mas and Omar Puente with Billy Bragg and music from the Afro-Caribbean diaspora, plus poetry from Jean Binta Breeze and Benjamin Zephaniah and contributions from Tony Benn, film director Ken Loach, actors Tom Wilkinson, Alan Rickman, Frances and Andy de la Tour and from Haitians in UK

Leaflet available here (PDF) - see here for more information on the TUC Aid Haiti Earthquake Appeal.

'The Unbroken Thread' (ft. Attenborough, Goodall, Sagan)

I completely love this - it's from the The Symphony of Science, a musical project headed by John Boswell designed to deliver scientific knowledge and philosophy in musical form. More videos here.

Hat-tip to Chicken Yoghurt via Graham Linehan

LAZY FRIDAY - Hurt Feelings

Have you even been told that your ass is too big? Have you ever been asked if your hair is a wig?

Yet another brilliant Friday lunchtime distraction, from Flight of the Conchords:

Black Indie Band Held At Gunpoint By Police

On the day that Denis O'Connor's review of the G20 protest has suggested (on page 67) that the Code of Practice on the police use of firearms might be a model for how public order might also be codified, I received this salutary reminder that its not the manual that matters, but the police themselves:

The Thirst is an indie band based in Brixton that consists of brothers Mensah and Kwame Cofi-Agyeman, Mark Lenihan and Marcus Harris. They were scouted by Ronnie Wood a few years ago, have supported The Rolling Stones, played at the Isle of Wight and Glastonbury festivals and toured with Pete Doherty. Band members are major supporters of Love Music Hate Racism.

On 21st November, The Thirst played a gig in Chase (Cannock) in Staffordshire. The gig went well but when the band left the venue they were confronted by a team of armed police. Under a helicopter spotlight, the band members had guns held to their heads and were all arrested, thrown into police vans and taken to a police station. They were given no information as to why it was happening. They were all released the following afternoon. The only explanation they were given by police was that they were being held on suspicion of possessing firearms.

Because their car had a flat battery, they were treated like criminals. Would the police have acted in the same way if there had been a white driver rather than six young black men?

This is Mensah’s description of what the band experienced:

"We had a good gig. I left the venue and we had to try and jump-start the old Range Rover that we were using, I opened the bonnet and as soon as I did about six police cars came around the corner. I looked to my friend and thought that they'd just want to check our insurance documents. The next thing all chaos erupted, I had red lasers pointed at my chest and on my head. There was a helicopter above us with a spotlight on us. All we could here was shouting.

I had a gun being forced on my neck. "Get down, get on the ground", "turn around, put your hands up" we were getting all different directions shouted at us. It didn't seem like any of them knew what they were doing. The fact alone that I could feel the policeman shaking through the end of the gun he had to my neck was enough to make me feel very nervous. He had my life in his hands and they were shaking.

We were all forced into the van with no information as to why we were being arrested, no explanation. I still can't believe that there was man with a gun to my head shaking. They were apparently waiting outside for two hours for us to finish the gig. Is it reasonable to believe that they thought that our guitar cases and coats were concealing shotguns? We were headlining a gig in Staffordshire! It was like walking into a movie set but it was too real.

The whole band, our manager and our sound engineer were locked up. There was no explanation from the police, we heard that fans from the show had contacted the police. In the end, the promoter of the gig even rang the mayor of the town for his support in order to get us released. All that the police said when they released us was that we were held overnight as we were suspected of carrying firearms. It's hard to believe that this can still happen today. We were treated like animals, we had no human rights."

The Artist Who Took Sides

Despite still feeling a bit under the weather, I headed over to Stratford Circus this evening to see Call Mr Robeson, the excellent Tayo Aluko's one-man tribute to the black American actor and singer.

I'm really glad that I made it - it was a wonderful performance, one firmly rooted in Robeson's socialist politics that began with his contact with Welsh coal miners in the late 1920s, whom he met whilst performing Showboat in London. His involvement with trade unions in Britain led to solidarity with the Republican cause in Spain, trips to Russia and staunch (and largely uncritical) support for the Soviet Union, the basis for his eventual persecution by the House Unamerican Activities Committee in the late 1940s.

Robeson was prevented from travelling, his passport taken from him and he found it increasingly difficult to record or perform. In an act of defiance that was typical of his refusal to compromise, he sang at a union-organised concert on the American side of the U.S.-Canada border to a 20,000 strong Canadian audience. After six years, Robeson was finally allowed to return to the UK and to travel extensively around the world, before ill health led to his return to the US.

Tayo Aluko's performance of a artist who always took sides, an activist who preceded the civil rights movement of the 1960s but outlived both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X (who had asked to meet Robeson shortly before his assassination), captures wonderfully the personality and history of a pioneering black socialist and musician whose achievements only really began to be celebrated after Robeson's death in 1976.

There's only one more show in London, this Friday at the Greenwich Theatre, before it heads to the States. It's well worth checking out.

Celebrating The Sinnerman's 300th Post

A celebration of my 300th post: my favourite song ever... turn it up as loud as pssible.

Report back on the Workers Climate Action conference tomorrow.

Forest Gate - Sorry Mate? Nah, Nothing, It's Fine..

Respect to Riz for this: seems appropriate to post it on the eighth anniversary.

Radiohead: Harry Patch (In memory of)

I found the broadcast on Radio 4's Today programme the morning, of Radiohead's tribute to Harry Patch, the last British survivor of the carnage of the battle of Passchendaele in 1917, strangely moving.

Despite efforts by supporters of the war in Afghanistan to claim him as one of their own, Patch, who died on 25 July and is buried tomorrow, was staunchly anti-war, saying that "war is organised murder" and that "it was not worth one let alone all the millions".

Thom Yorke's lyrics are Patch's own words, taken from a radio interview in 2005. The song can be downloaded for £1 from here, with proceeds going to the Royal British Legion.

Harry Patch (In Memory Of)

I am the only one that got through
The others died where ever they fell
It was an ambush
They came up from all sides
Give your leaders each a gun and then let them fight it out themselves
I've seen devils coming up from the ground
I've seen hell upon this earth
The next will be chemical but they will never learn

The Revolution Will Not Be Bit Torrented

Or perhaps it will...